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Edited by Bett

theker

THE UNFOLDING
DRAMA

Studies in ILS. History

theke

Herber

THE UNFOLDING DRAMA

Studies in U.S. History
by Herbert Aptheker

Edited by Bettina Aptheker

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS, New York

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Aptheker. Herbert, 1915-
The unfolding drama.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. United States History —Addresses, essays,
lectures. I. Aptheker, Bettina. II. Title.
E178.6.A66 973 78-21025

ISBN 0-7178-0560-3
ISBN 0-7178-0501-8 pbk.

CONTENTS

Foreword • ix

part I WRITING HISTORY

1. Founding the Republic

The Revolutionary Character of the American
Revolution • 5

The Declaration of Independence • 13

2. Prelude to Civil War

The Labor Movement in the South During Slavery • 29
Class Conflicts in the South: 1850-1860 • 48
On the Centenary of John Brown’s Execution • 67

3. Saving the Republic

The Civil War • 81

The Emancipation Proclamation • 96

part II HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

4. Racism and Class Consciousness

Class Consciousness in the United States • 109
White Chauvinism: The Struggle Inside the Ranks • 120
The History of Anti-Racism in the United States • 129

5. History and Partisanship

Falsification in History • 139

The American Historical Profession • 145

Notes • 157

Bibliographical Comment • 165
Index *171

The American War is over, but this is far from
being the case with the American Revolution.

On the contrary, nothing but the first act
of the great drama is closed.

Benjamin Rush
at the Constitutional Convention, 1787

FOREWORD

As the United States enters its third century, “futurologists”— that new
breed of sociologist obsessed with avowing the survival of capitalism —
continue to forecast a remarkably cheerful outlook for the bourgeoisie
in the year 2000. Puzzled by the seeming incongruity between this, and
the prevailing pessimism about the future of anything in most other
professional circles, I scanned the futurological literature. Four striking
things emerged.

First, Black people, when they are mentioned (which is not very
often) are always discussed in terms of the threat they pose to the new
super-industrial society. Alvin Toffler, for example, in his Future
Shock, warns that “in the new fast-paced, cybernetic society, this
minority can, by sabotage, strike or a thousand other means disrupt the
entire system.”

Black people pose a technical problem for the social engineer of the
future. How shall they be contained? Toffler, being of relatively liberal
persuasion, suggests “bringing them into the system as full partners,
permitting them to participate in social goal setting ...” A minority,
Toffler maintains, “so laced into the system” is far less likely to be
disruptive.

Others, less liberal in their world view, suggest different solutions:
preventive detention, psycho-surgery, surveillance via an electronic
impulse implanted in the brain. Behavior modification, through the use
of electric shock or the more sophisticated drug-induced sensation of
asphyxiation, is an increasingly fashionable solution.

The second striking feature of the futurological realm is the disposi-
tion of women. Women are discussed in terms of their relationship to
men; that is to say, as sexual objects. The primary problem for the
(male) futurologist then, is the impact of the technological/ biological

FOREWORD

changes on the future of sexual relations, family structure and women
as the bearers of children.

“When babies can be grown in a laboratory jar what happens to the
very notion of maternity?” Toffler queries. He continues: “If embryos
are for sale, can a corporation buy one? Can it buy ten thousand? Can it
resell them? ... If we buy and sell living embryos are we back to some
form of slavery?” Toffler says these are some of the really pressing issues
we must resolve.

The third notable feature of the futurological rendition is that by the
year 2,000 there will apparently be no more Native American Indian,
Chicano, Latino, Puerto Rican or Asian peoples in the United States.
At least there is no mention of them in the futurological references
surveyed. Presumably, by then, someone will have engineered the final
solution to this problem.

The fourth distinctive feature of future society is the disappearance of
the working class, and with it the class struggle. This is not really
explained; it is simply assumed.

Unable to cope with the enormity of the social chaos created by
capitalism these future-focused sociologists have abandoned even the
pretense of reform. Instead, they propose the containment and/or
extinction of all “problems.”

Once having contained or eliminated Black, Chicano, Asian and
Native American Indian peoples, women and workers, they can allow
their imaginations to run wild. In ecstasy they anticipate their future
push-button “James Bond” world of instant comfort, instant food,
instant sex and disposable people.

The bourgeoisie creates a futurological spectacular in its own image,
a technological wonderland finally stripped of all humanity, all mean-
ing and all purpose. Sensing the end, the bourgeois rulers frantically
seek Utopia, and so write their own epitaph.

As futurologists have sought to contain and/or eliminate the “prob-
lem” of the poor and the oppressed, so most bourgeois historians have
sought to obscure and deny their history. And for very much the same
reason. “The present is made up of the past,” Herbert Aptheker writes,
“and the future is the past and the present dialectically intertwined.
Controlling the past,” he continues, “is of great consequence in deter-
mining the present and shaping the future ” Indeed, the futurologi-

cal offering is an exact replication of predominant themes in bourgeois
historiography.

FOREWORD

In denying the history of the poor and the oppressed the bourgeoisie
has also denied their humanity. As Dr. Du Bois put it, in describing his
experiences as a graduate student at Harvard at the turn of the century:
“The history of the world was paraded before [us] . . . Which was the
superior race? Manifestly that which had a history, the white race . . .
Africa was left without culture and without history.”

Rescuing the history of those whose labor created the wealth of
society is the responsibility of the revolutionary scholar; and preserving
the record of those whose struggles shaped the basic contours of society
is the responsibility of the revolutionary movement. “We have the
record of kings and gentlemen ad nauseam and in stupid detail,”
Du Bois wrote in his introduction to Herbert Aptheker’s massive
Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, “but of
the common run of human beings, and particularly of the half or wholly
submerged working group, the world has saved all too little of authentic
record and tried to forget or ignore even the little saved.”

While on the one hand the bourgeoisie appears to assign little
importance to the history of the poor and the oppressed, paradoxically
(and understandably), it also devotes enormous energy and resources to
the systematic distortion of that history. Acknowledging the paucity of
literature on Black women, for example, Angela Davis observed that:
“We must also contend with the fact that too many of these rare studies
[that do focus on Black women] claim as their signal achievement the
reinforcement of fictitious cliches and . . . have given credence to grossly
distorted categories through which the Black woman continues to be
perceived.”

Aptheker, in concluding his thought on the dialectical relationship
between past, present and future, notes that: “Hitherto, exploitative
ruling classes have gone to great pains to control the past— that is, to
write and teach so-called history.” In doing so they have been able to
divert, or blunt the impact of many democratic and revolutionary
movements. This has been especially true as regards the history of the
struggle against racism.

From the Marxist perspective the really important epistemological
question in history is how ordinary people, working people in particu-
lar, have survived a brutal and exploitative system; and resisted,
struggled and thereby changed the course of human events. History is
not primarily a recitation of dates, or a chronicle of events. It is above
all else the critical analysis of social movement.

FOREWORD

xii

The definitive character of Herbert Aptheker’s work stems primarily
from his identification with Marxism. Even the kinds of historical
questions Aptheker asked himself reflect the anti-elitist and dynamic
qualities of the Marxist methodology. Why else focus on the history of
Afro-American people? Why write about labor struggles in the South
during slavery; or class conflicts in the South in the decade preceding
the Civil War; or slave rebellions? These questions occurred to Ap-
theker because of the Marxist preoccupation with apprehending the
process of change, the nature of causality, and the forward motion of
history. They also provided him with a wholly original and unique
vantage point from which to view the main currents of United States
history.

Herbert Aptheker’s first published w'ork appeared in his high school
newspaper in 1932. It was called “The Dark Side of the South,” and
contained his impressions of his first trip to the Southern states. He was
then sixteen years old. That same year the trial of the Black Commu-
nist, Angelo Herndon, took place in Georgia. Herndon was charged
with insurrection as a consequence of his activities in the movement of
the unemployed. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years on
the Georgia chain gang. The intervention of world public opinion,
organized by the Communist Party of the United States, forced
Herndon’s release before the sentence could be executed. One of
Aptheker’s earliest memories is of a mobile exhibit, prepared by the
Herndon defense committee in New York City, which toured the
neighborhood w'here he lived. The exhibit displayed a cage, with the
figure of a Black man chained inside, to dramatize the Herndon case.

By 1938, and for the next several years, Aptheker was again in the
South, this time as an educational worker for the Food and Tobacco
Workers Union. Working with him was the Black Communist and
leader of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Louis E. Burnham.
Aptheker joined the Communist Party in 1939. Shortly thereafter he
served as Secretary of the Abolish Peonage Committee. Two months
after the United States entered the Second World War Aptheker joined
the army, asked to be assigned to Black troops, and fought in the
European theater. His outfit took Dusseldorf. He was in Paris on V.E.
Day.

Infused through all of Aptheker’s scholarship is a definite, even
passionate partisanship for the oppressed. Much of this, I think, stems
from his experiences in the movement, and in the war; and, from the

xiii

very special kind of support and encouragement given him by workers
in general, and Black workers in particular. For example, while assem-
bling the material for his study of American Negro Slave Revolts,
Aptheker often had difficulty obtaining the documents he requested
from white officials in the Southern archives. During one memorable
search it was the Black caretaker who let him into the archives after
dark, located the documents in question, and assisted in putting them
together.

This collection of Herbert Aptheker’s writings is based exclusively on
his work in U.S. history. Many of these selections have long been out-
of-print, and most have never appeared in book form. The origin of
each item is indicated. No substantive changes have been made. A
bibliographical comment at the end provides something of an overview
of Aptheker’s contribution to U.S. historiography. Related books and
articles which he has produced are also cited.

It has been an honor and a privilege to select, arrange and edit this
collection of Herbert Aptheker’s writings. It is hoped that the effort
may be worthy of Aptheker as historian. In any event, it is certain that
this historical record, as created by Herbert Aptheker, portends a
future somewhat more conducive to human values than the grotesque
fantasies of the futurologists.

Bettina Aptheker

THE UNFOLDING DRAMA

WRITING HISTORY

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

The Revolutionary Character
of the American Revolution

In the U nited States today there are two apparently contradictory views
of the American Revolution which dominate the news media, the
publishing industry and academia. One, associated with the attitude of
the Daughters of the American Revolution and given sophisticated
reiteration in the writings of Daniel J. Boorstin, among many others,
holds that the unique feature of the American Revolution was that it
was not a revolution, or at most, that it was a conservative revolution.
This concept fills the official pronouncements and spirit of the Bicen-
tennial Commission of the United States Government.

The other view holds that the American Revolution was a perfect one
in conception and execution; that it was the quintessence of human
accomplishment and that its applicability to the present is complete. To
the degree that this view emphasizes the shortcomings of present-day
U.S. society and dominant policy, it possesses progressive elements; but
in its tendency to make the event of the eighteenth century an un-
blemished model for all time, it falsifies history and tends to reinforce
the foundations of the status quo, especially since it ignores the
hegemony in that revolution of the classes possessing the means of
production, which, then, included not only the bourgeoisie but also the

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

slaveowners. Such a view of the Revolution results not only in down-
playing the reality of class differentiation and struggle in the America of
the eighteenth century; it also tends to minimize— or even ignore — the
realities of chattel slavery and of the genocidal policy pursued toward
the Indian peoples and the vile racism that served as the rationalization
and prop for both atrocities.

Seeing the Revolution in this uncritical and false manner tends also
to support the quite conservative and reactionary view that holds that a
revolutionary outlook in the present for an American is on its face un-
American and truly alien. This was the characteristic view of such
notorious reactionaries, for example, as the late Nicholas Murray
Butler, formerly president of Columbia University, who insisted that
since— in his opinion — the Revolution of the eighteenth century pro-
duced a perfect society or at least a model for a perfect society and even
a method for alterations should blemishes appear, one who lived in this
paradise and still retained a revolutionary outlook was either a mad-
man or an agent of some hostile foreign power!

There also exists in the United States today, especially among ultra-
Leftists and other political infants, an utterly cynical view of the
American Revolution in which the event as a whole is simply dismissed
as farcical or meaningless or hypocritical or demagogic and other such
labels reflecting the emptiness of the heads concocting them. The
practical result of this view— as in everything else associated with the
ultra-Left— is to assist the ruling class in ballyhooing the Revolution
and turning its “celebration” into an occasion for selling toothpaste and
deodorants.

The Revolution which resulted in the creation of the United States of
America was the product of the interplay of three fundamental forces:
a) the contradiction in the relationship between colonizing power and
colonists; b) the contradictions within the colonies expressive of their
class divisions and the fact that whenever these contradictions reached
politically explosive phases the power of Britain was exercised in
support of the status quo and in opposition to popular forces; and c) the
development through several generations of the sense of a distinction
between being an “American” and being an Englishman; that is, the
forging of a new nation and therefore of a distinct national conscious-
ness. One may add that the dialectical interlocking of these forces
served to influence and exacerbate each, so that a) and b) helped in the
forging of c) and the latter helped accentuate the former, etc.

THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION

Those specific aspects of the Revolution which explain why Lenin
could refer to it as “one of those great, really liberating, really revolu-
tionary wars of which there have been so few,”1 include the following:

The American Revolution was the first successful colonial rebellion
in modern history and it marked the overcoming in armed struggle by
an aroused population of the greatest military and naval power in the
world at that time.

It affirmed in achievement and in theory — as in the Declaration of
Independence— the right of national self-determination.

It postulated the equality of all men, again notably in the Declaration
of I ndependence. Of course, its authors meant men and not women and
meant propertied men and not indentured men, nor enslaved men, nor
colored men; but for its time even the limited meaning of its usage was a
significant advance over conditions then prevailing in the world. Fur-
thermore, with the sweep of its language, other times and other societies
would universalize the concept so that it would indeed include the great
idea of the essential equality of humanity— in its needs, dreams,
aspirations and capacities.

The Revolution and the instruments of government resulting from it
expounded the concept of popular sovereignty. Again, with those who
announced this, its meaning was limited to the concept of “people” in
the eighteenth century— male, white, propertied. But many among the
people, then, too, read this quite differently. Furthermore, the idea of
popular sovereignty was something quite new for hitherto sovereignty
inhered in the Sovereign and all these words were spelled with capital
letters to reflect the great dignity associated with them and the rever-
ence required. In that sense, the very term “popular sovereignty” was a
linguistic innovation if not contradiction and its fullest implementation
in all areas of life was and remains the basic agenda of history ever since
the eighteenth century.

The Revolution was based on the political theory that the purpose of
government ought to be one which makes possible among its citizen-
ry—note citizenry, not subjects— “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness” — the latter phrase a significant alteration from John
Locke’s affirmation that government should protect “life, liberty and
property.”2 It is not that the Fathers of the Revolution were men who
rejected the notion that the security of private property was the basic
purpose of government; on the contrary, they accepted this as axioma-
tic. But, nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the Lockean concept was

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

amended and that the amendment makes possible— indeed, invites—
broader and more humane purposes of government than those an-
nounced by the seventeenth century revolutionist.

The revolutionists insisted that only a government with the purposes
just described was a government; without such purposes so-called
government degenerated into tyranny and when such degeneration
appeared, the revolutionists declared (and were practicing) that it was
not only the right but it was the duty of those inhabiting so afflicted a
land to make every effort to alter it, to bring it into accordance with
proper aims of government and that if such alteration could only be
accomplished through revolution, then that, too, became both a right
and an obligation.

The revolutionists came to the conclusion that monarchy and inher-
ited nobility were incompatible with popular sovereignty and with
purposes of government which envisaged support for the pursuit of
happiness as well as contradicting concepts of human equality. There-
fore, they instituted republican forms of government in each of the
rebelling colonies and in the central government; in doing this they
“smashed” the former state and forged a quite new one. Special
attention is to be given to the fact that the two central aspects of the
Revolution — independence and a republican form of government —
were guaranteed by the Constitution whose adoption sealed the Revo-
lution. That is, just as one would be treasonous if he sought the
elimination of the independence of the United States of America so also
would one be treasonous if he sought to terminate the republican form
of government. Both remained significantly threatened for a generation
after the Revolution succeeded in battle, and it is characteristic of
revolutions that once successful they do not permit any contesting of
the essential purposes of the revolution— whether that be independence
and a republic, or independence and socialism. The Constitution of the
U nited States in guaranteeing a republican form of government to each
of the states simultaneously is affirming that there is no “freedom” to
seek to establish a monarchical form.

More extended notice of the “smashing” of existing colonial state
forms may be useful. As the revolutionary process unfolded, beginning
in the 1760s, there came into being extra-legal and sometimes illegal
organizations of Committees of Correspondence, Sons (and Daugh-
ters) of Liberty, Sons of Neptune (reflecting the key role of maritime
workers in the revolutionary movement in the cities) and other groups

THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION

called Associators. All these were tools for communication, propagan-
da, and, above all, organization; they eventuated into a governing form
with a new name and content— a congress— and finally into the Conti-
nental Congress. The simplicity of these titles was deliberate and
reflected the action-directed and popular nature they possessed. Their
presiding officer was called simply “president,” though some of the
Right in the revolutionary movement suggested more resplendent titles
like “Your Highness” or even “Your Majesty.” Even the place in the
then most populous city— Philadelphia— where the Congress was to
meet was a matter of debate, with again the conservative wing of the
revolutionary movement urging the State House, hitherto used by the
royal officials, as a proper locale. But this was rejected at the invitation
of the carpenters of the city and with the agreement of the more radical
wing of the revolutionary movement. Thus, the Congress met in the
carpenters’ hall — the latter now capitalized and rendered as Carpenters'
Hall, and much of the population of the United States does not realize
that that hall was simply the meeting place of the carpenters (and other
mechanics and artisans) of the city.

The concept of popular sovereignty was given flesh and blood insofar
as the Revolution did represent the will and the power of the vast
majority of the population. Precise figures are not available but all the
evidence suggests that at least 70 percent of the population was
significantly and consciously part of the revolutionary effort. It was the
so-called common people who formed the bulk of the pressure groups,
who enforced the boycotts, who rid the country of the king’s officers,
who formed the armed forces of the Revolution and who bested the
greatest military and naval power then in the world.

It is the American Revolution that introduces significant guerrilla
warfare with the great names of Marion, Sumter and Fox; and, indeed,
the war as a whole so far as the revolutionary forces were concerned was
fought in guerrilla style as befits a people’s war. That is, the armies of
Washington and Greene hit and ran and hit and ran again. Those
armies often did the “impossible,” crossing icy waters as at T renton and
storming mountains as at Stony Point; and they fought in a way the
colonists had learned from the Indians — hiding behind trees and
boulders, depending upon individual initiative. For generations after
the war, the nobility of England referred to the Americans as “tricky”
and “unmanly” for they did not Fight in the regulation way that the
drafted and mercenary armies employed by European royalty had
developed.

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

The British took all the major cities in rebeldom; they were on the
coast and no one then could long withstand the British navy. So New
York and Philadelphia and Charleston were taken. But once the British
troops moved inland they faced not only accumulating logistical prob-
lems but also a hostile population which was not backward in manifest-
ing that hostility.

It was in the South that the British had their greatest military
successes and took most territory. That was because some 35 percent of
the population therein was made up of chattel slaves and these slaves,
having been denied freedom by the revolutionists — though this had
been repeatedly demanded— acted in their own behalf. In some cases,
where freedom for enlistment was forthcoming, they did join the
revolutionary army (perhaps as many as 5,000 did this), but, in general,
slaves went to where freedom was and a result was that perhaps as many
as 100,000 fled plantations in the South from 1775 through 1783. British
commanders in the field suggested to London the wisdom of raising the
flag of abolition and affirmed that if this were done the Revolution
would be over in the South in a month. London rejected the suggestion
because many among the richest slaveowners were themselves Tories
and also because the British West Indies contained some 750,000
slaves — and once the flag of abolition is raised it is very difficult to
confine it.

A somewhat similar situation prevailed with the perhaps 300,000
Indian population in the colonies. That is, they were not able to unite
among themselves and, playing upon this fatal disunity, the Americans
and the British were able either to win over or to neutralize certain
sections of the Indian peoples. The result was that some among those
people fought for one side and some for the other— and some abstained
altogether. But, in any case, without unity, successful strategy for
themselves was not possible and with the end of the Revolution a policy
of federal enmity produced catastrophe for the Indian peoples.

In these two cases in particular the severe limitations of a bourgeois-
democratic effort — even in the eighteenth century with the bourgeoisie
young and, in a historic sense, progressive — are made palpably clear.

The international quality of the Revolution is outstanding. Of
course, in the early stages of the movement, beginning in the 1760s, the
colonial protest movement was part of the general protest movement in
England. Thus, when the colonists demanded, as they did, “the rights of
Englishmen,” the King rejected this not only because they were colo-

THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION

nists and not Englishmen, but also because, as he said, “if I yield to the
mob in Boston, how shall I control the mob in London?” Further,
among the colonists, the demands came not only from merchants and
planters against commercial and trade policies which, of course,
favored the English ruling class; demands came also from seamen and
workers and servants and even slaves. These, too, had their particular
and very pressing grievances: opposition to the quartering of troops in
their homes and neighborhoods; opposition to the employment of
British troops in the colonies at wages a fraction of those normally paid
colonial workers; the impressing of “common” people into the army
and navy of the Crown.

Organized opposition from these masses was a fundamental feature
of the American Revolution and to yield to such opposition from such a
source meant to the Crown and nobility and ruling circles of Britain
(and many of their allies in the colonies) simply the end of civilization.

Significant in the outcome of the war was the refusal of the Canadian
population to play a counter-revolutionary role; basic, too, was the
revolutionary turmoil in Ireland which led the English Crown to
dispatch some of its best troops not to Boston but to Dublin. And, of
course, the rising European movement to culminate in the French
Revolution had already induced volunteers from France, Holland,
Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Hungary to serve the Amer-
ican cause. In addition, power rivalries between France and England,
Spain and England, Holland and England made possible the successes
of the diplomacy of the American revolutionaries.

The Revolution did, then, break one of the links in the chain of
colonialism. It did overcome monarchy and establish a republican form
of government based on the concept of popular sovereignty. It elimi-
nated the last vestiges of feudalism, as primogeniture, quitrent, entail. It
contributed to the termination of imprisonment for debt and inden-
tured servitude. It provided for the separation of church and state; it
enhanced the concept of education; it helped promote some aspects of
the rights of women; it led to the manumission of several thousand
slaves and to the elimination of chattel slavery in the North and to some
forward movement in the outlawry of the international slave trade.

Some contemporaries wanted more; the mass organizations in par-
ticular pressed for further advances, especially in terms of assuring
widespread popular political power, curbing economic monopolies and
advancing educational possibilities. Some women and a few men did

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

THF. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

point out the glaring failure to think of and treat women as people and
the free Black population petitioned repeatedly for an end to slavery as
a cancer which would grow with the growth of the republic and if not
excised now at its birthing time would one day threaten the nation’s
existence.

But the hegemony of the eighteenth century Revolution being in the
hands of those who owned the means of production, the severe limita-
tions of such classes— even in their “finest” hour— as to the meaning of
“democracy” and of “freedom” were clear. This encompassed the
racism born with the birth of capitalism as well as the male supremacist
outlook and practice strengthened by that capitalism (and slavery).
Above all, the propertied classes held to an overall elitism so that
Alexander Hamilton was able to warn of “The People, Sir, the People is
a great Beast”; and John Adams was wont to use as synonyms, “the
rich, the able and the well-born,” and John Jay— first Chief Justice of
the United States— felt it to be self-understood that, as he said, “those
who own the country should govern it.” Even Thomas Jefferson,
having in mind urban masses, referred to them as the “swinish multi-
tude.”

To them and their classes, freedom meant an absence of restraint,
and was a political matter entirely and not at all economic. The
economic system under which they flourished was “freedom” so far as
they were concerned and the problem of successful government was to
restrain tyranny (monarchy) on the one hand and “anarchy” or “chaos”
on the other, by which they meant real mass, popular rule. Still, then
too, in the eighteenth century, it was the participation and strength of
the masses that made possible the success of the Revolution and made
possible whatever positive achievements it could and did record. Those
achievements — and what they portended — were enough so that there
was good reason for the British band that accompanied Lord Corn-
wallis’s surrender to Washington at Yorktown in 1781 to play the tune
“The World Turned Upside Down.” The music from the British band
hinted that this surrender was something new, was not the time-
honored ceremony of one monarch’s hirelings having bested another,
but was rather the triumph of revolutionary republicans.

Lenin, while leading a revolution of an infinitely higher form of
democracy— a revolution for socialism— could well appeal to the revo-
lutionary traditions here, in his “Letter to American Workers,” and
remind them that their country was founded by a “really revolutionary

war.” That which was most advanced in that revolutionary war came
from the brains and experiences and blood and sweat of their class
brothers, their fellow toilers in the eighteenth century. In our own era,
that which is best in the world and in the body politic of the United
States lies in the consciousness and organized strength of working men
and women of all colors and all nationalities.

Here in the United States the deepest meaning of the Bicentennial of
the Revolution is to comprehend that Revolution as a great milepost of
the past 200 years of human history along the way to the achievement of
colonial and national liberation, the termination of racism and all
forms of elitism and the emancipation of the working class. And it is the
victorious working class, it is socialism, which, as a “by-product,”
brings to fruition for the twentieth century the promises in the immortal
manifesto of Revolution, which is the birth certificate of the United
States of America.

Published in World Marxist Review, Vol. 18, No. 7, July 1975, pp. 100-108.

The Declaration of Independence

The legislature of Virginia discovered this year that the business of the
state was interfered with excessively because of a large number of
official holidays. It was noted that the birthdays of two sons of Virginia
were state holidays— those of Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee—
and it was agreed that only one should be so honored. Which was to be
retained? There was perfunctory debate; the honorable members quick-
ly agreed to drop Jefferson.

The class which seeks to murder freedom at home and wage war
abroad, the class whose morality and perspectives are summed up in the
word, McCarthyism, is embarrassed by the memory of our Republic’s
founder, and charmed by the memory of him who, to perpetuate

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

slavery, led a nearly successful effort to overthrow our Republic by
force and violence.

This class, ruling a nation whose sovereignty was won in vindicating
the right to self-determination, is now the main bulwark of colonialism
and seeks, through corruption and fire, to prevent other peoples from
consummating their 1776. In this connection, at the moment, American
imperialism’s effort to crush the liberation movement in Indo-China
immediately comes to mind. It is universally acknowledged that there,
as Mark Gayn writes (The Nation, June 5, 1954), “in any free election
Ho Chi Minh would win by a landslide.” So beloved is the man and his
cause that even an official of the Bao Dai puppet regime confessed to a
New York Times reporter (May 9, 1954): “Ho Chi Minh is so greatly
revered even on this side that we don’t dare attack him in our propagan-
da.”

Admitting of only one answer is the question of this revered leader:

What would the ancestors of present-day America think, men like Franklin
or Jefferson, if they saw American bombers being used to hold back a small
nation like ours from gaining our independence?1

It is a fact that of 275 descendants of those forefathers, asked (by the
N. Y. Post and the Madison Capital-Times back in 1951) to sign their
names, as did Franklin and Jefferson, to the opening paragraphs of the
Declaration of Independence, not one would do so. They knew the
document’s freedom-loving character, and they knew that the red-
baiters, in seeking to suppress the ideas of Marx and Lenin, also aimed
at the ideas of Franklin and Jefferson.

Life magazine, editorializing some time ago on the Declaration of
Independence, posed as being distressed at the tendency, among high
government officials and policy makers, to play it down. Said Life (July
7, 1952):

There may be a simple explanation for our soft-pedaling of the Declara-
tion in these years of American leadership: for us to advocate it now entails a
new and grave political responsibility for the real consequences, and those
are hard to foresee.

Mr. Luce’s penman was disingenous. It is not leadership which
induces the soft-pedaling; it is the aims of the leadership, conflicting
with the aims of the Declaration, which induce the soft-pedaling. It is
because, as the same pen wrote in opening the editorial: “Jefferson’s
picture still vies with Lenin’s in ‘backward’ young countries like

Indonesia. . . ,” “Vies?” No; the pictures hang side-by-side for they
complement each other — one the incarnation of eighteenth century
anti-feudalism and anti-colonialism, the other the incarnation of twen-
tieth century anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. One is the exemplar
of bourgeois democracy; the other, of proletarian democracy. And
these are ideologically and historically related — dialectically, not for-
mally—the latter carrying forward and transforming the former, realiz-
ing on the basis of the historically higher economic foundation the
higher, socialist, level of democracy. Wrote Lenin:

. . . just as socialism cannot be victorious unless it introduces complete
democracy, so the proletariat will be unable to prepare for victory over the
bourgeoisie unless it wages a many-sided, consistent and revolutionary
struggle for democracy.2

As the imperialists would prevent new declarations of independence
by suppressing present-day liberation efforts, so increasingly their
historians would emasculate our Declaration of Independence by
denying — somewhat retroactively — the existence of the American Rev-
olution.

This is a theme, for example, of Professor Russell Kirk’s widely
heralded The Conservative Mind (Chicago, 1953) and it is expressed at
greater length in Professor Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Genius of Amer-
ican Politics (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953). The latter finds “the most
obvious peculiarity of our Revolution” to have been that “it was hardly
a revolution at all.” The events mistakenly thought of by George
Washington and George III as a revolution were really only a “conser-
vative colonial rebellion.” Actually, it was “Parliament that had been
revolutionary, by exercising a power for which there was no warrant in
English constitutional precedent.” The colonists “were fighting not so
much to establish new rights as to preserve old ones.” No one, then,
need be surprised to learn that Professor Boorstin finds the Declaration
of Independence to have had a “conservative character.”

In the course of our analysis we shall deal with these interesting
views.

* * *

What is the meaning of the Declaration of Independence? What are
its lessons for today?

The Declaration of Independence expressed the soul of that Revolu-

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

tion and was itself a mighty weapon for its consummation. There are
three main streams whose convergence produced that revolution. They
sparkle through the lines of Jefferson’s “passionate chant of human
freedom.”

These three streams— interrelated and interpenetrating— are: First,
the development of a new nationality, the American, as the result of the
colonists’ far-flung separation from the imperial power, their life in a
new land with different climate, fauna, flora, their representing a new
people derived from the blending of a score of peoples, their developing
their own history, their own economy, their own common language, the
beginnings of their own cultural expressions and their own mode of
responding to their environment— their own psychology.

Second, with the planting of the colonies were planted the seeds of
the Revolution, for the interests of the rulers of the colonizing power
and of the colonists were contradictory and antagonistic. The relation-
ship was that of exploiter and exploited, of dominant and subordinate.
There remained only the necessity for the growth in the numbers and
strength of the subordinate, the repressed, and the development of a
revolutionary consciousness, for the subordination and repression to
become more and more onerous and more and more intolerable.

This manifested itself especially in the development of a colonial
bourgeoisie— becoming ever more articulate, organized and politically
mature— which found increasingly insufferable and therefore unjust
the British ruling class’s insistence on crippling their development,
hampering their trade, taxing their industry, and keeping them from
controlling their own immediate market, not to speak of expanding
that market or moving out into other areas of trade and profit. This
bourgeoisie, young and vigorous, still having before it a century of
growth and creativity, had requirements and developed a program
consonant with resistance to tyranny, and with the needs of the
developing nation. Therefore it could and did offer leadership in the
struggle to realize that nation’s independence.

Third, the colonies were class societies and, hence, within them, class
struggle was characteristic. There was, then, not only the trans-Atlantic
conflict but also the internal conflict: artisan, mechanic, worker against
merchant and boss; slave against slaveowner; yeoman against large
planter; debtor farmers against wealthy landowners and creditors.
These class struggles permeate all of colonial history and always— from
Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1676 to the Massachusetts Land War

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

led by Samuel Adams’s father in the 1740s— the forces of the king were
arrayed on the side of “law and order” (i.e., exploitation and plunder)
and served as bulwarks against the urgent demands of the colonial
masses. In this sense the civil-war aspect of the Revolution— the
struggle against the homegrown Tories — represented a continuation
and a development of earlier internal colonial struggles, just as the
trans-Atlantic aspect of the Revolution — the struggle against the king
and Lord North — represented a continuation and a development of
earlier, external colonial struggles. And just as before the Revolution
these struggles had been related, so during the Revolution they were
related — indeed, merged.

In this sense, too, one Finds not only Patriot and Tory divided, but the
revolutionary coalition itself divided. Within that coalition there was a
Left, Center and Right, and basic to their differences was exactly the
question of independence, of breaking completely from British domi-
nation. In the eyes of the Right of the revolutionary coalition such a
break meant the loss of a great bulwark of conservatism, of mass
exploitation; an impeder of all leveling and democratic aspirations.
Hence, there was found resistance and opposition to independence;
while, for the contrary reasons, among the Left — speaking as this Left
did for the vast majority of the American masses — the urge was for
independence. Our history thus demonstrates that from the beginning,
from the days of the Revolution, the most devoted patriotism has come
from the Left, for it was this Left which was most influential in raising
the demand for and in achieving American independence.

Gouverneur Morris of New Y ork put the matter succinctly in a letter
of May 20, 1774:

I see, and 1 see it with fear and trembling, that if the disputes with Britain
continue, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions. We shall be
under the domination of a riotous mob [read: the People]. It is to the interest
of all men, therefore, to seek for reunion with the parent state.3

Morris, in seeking reunion was not, however, seeking subordination,
which was the end and the policy of the British government, as it was the
purpose of colonization. The same year, surely unbeknown to Morris,
the king was writing to his prime minister: “The New England govern-
ments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are to
be subject to this country or independent.”4

The king sees no middle way; exploitation is exploitation, and
subjection is just that. Reunion on those terms, yes; anything else is

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

rebellion, not reunion. It is this fact and the king’s acting on that fact,
which defeats the Morris policy, which makes independence indispen-
sable to the American cause and which holds to that cause the revolu-
tionary coalition.

The colonizing power inhibiting the colonial bourgeoisie and
oppressing the colonial masses faces the broadest kind of revolutionary
movement. For this bourgeoisie, young and progressive, subordinate
and oppressed, leads in the effort to throw off the common oppressor
and gives voice to ideas and to demands not only special to themselves
but also meaningful to all components of the revolutionary coalition.
Thus the three streams converge, and, under the hegemony of the
bourgeoisie, crystallize in revolutionary resistance to imperial domina-
tion.

This is the meaning of the colonists’ repeated demands for the “rights
of Englishmen,” for the removal of the “new shackles” as Jefferson put
it. Explaining the colonists' position, in a letter written in 1786, Jeffer-
son said their demand amounted to this:

Place us in the condition we were when the King came to the throne, let us
rest so. and we will be satisfied. This was the ground on which all the states
soon found themselves rallied, and that there was no other which could be
defended.5

In this sense there is some truth in Professor Boorstin’s remark,
already cited, that the colonists “were fighting not so much to establish
new rights as to preserve old ones.” But preserving old rights under new
conditions may itself be “subversive,” the more so as the preservation of
old rights under new conditions requires the creation of new rights.

How patently wrong, then, is Professor Boorstin when he refers to
the British government’s exercise of “power for which there was no
warrant in English constitutional precedent,” as “revolutionary.” It was
the opposite; it was counter-revolutionary. It was another example of a
ruling class grossly violating its own constitutional precedents when
those precedents impede the achievement of reactionary ends.

T hus, here, the colonists fight for the “rights of Englishmen,” for “no
taxation without representation;” and nothing could be a broader
demand or one more embarrassing for the Tory propagandists. What,
are we not Englishmen? And are we not, then, entitled to the rights of
Englishmen and the protection of the splendid English Constitution?

No, this demand is treason, and you arc not to have such rights and it
is not for this the empire exists; it is to enrich the rulers of Britain, not to

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

equalize the condition of his Majesty’s subjects. “If their Treason be
suffered to take root,” read the King’s Speech to the House of Peers,
Oct. 31, 1776, “much mischief must grow from it, to the safety of my
loyal colonies, to the commerce of my Kingdoms, and indeed to the
present System of all Europe.”6

And the king’s chief justice, Lord Mansfield, pointed out, further,
that these “rights of Englishmen” claimed by these upstart Americans,
this “no taxation without representation,” might revolutionize British
society itself, for there were millions of Englishmen without such rights,
who were taxed but not themselves represented. The demand cut not
only at the heart of the colonial system but also at the heart of the home
oligarchy which fed on and maintained that system. Shall the king take
his law from the rabble of Boston and, if so, how restrain the rabble of
London?7

The fact is that to obtain “the rights of Englishmen” the colonists had
to cease being Englishmen. Moreover, fighting to secure those rights
under the new conditions required fashioning new rights altogether:
sever church and state; eliminate punishment for “heretical” opinions;
provide for full religious freedom; undo the aristocratic system of
education; eliminate entail, primogeniture, and quitrent as feudal
anachronisms and favorable devices for the building up of a landhold-
ing oligarchy; confiscate the king’s estates and forests (and those of his
Tory adherents); remove all fetters and restrictions on commerce and
industry; smash the king’s colonial governmental structure and replace
it with revolutionary organs; advance the movement against slavery;
repudiate His Majesty’s divine authority; derive sovereignty from the
people’s will and, overall, establish, therefore, a res publica, a republic.

Such was the “conservative” American Revolution, helping to up-
root, as King George III saw, if modern American bourgeois scholars
will not, “the present system of all Europe.”

Yet, observe, it is the king who hurls down the gauntlet. The colonists
confess and possess no disloyalty to their monarch, as they understand
him and their position with respect to him. In requesting the rights of
Englishmen, they act with the greatest respect, with full legality, and
with due deference. They threaten no violence. They see justice on their
side and appear to assume that the king and his ministers will see it, too.
They are slow to become disillusioned; they are loath to believe the
worst: — the British government will not redress their grievances, will
not remove the yoke, will not place all subjects of the Crown upon an

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

equal status. No, the British government will add to the grievances,
tighten the yoke, reduce the Americans to subordination. As we have
seen, the king has told his prime minister, already in 1774, that “blows
must decide whether they [the colonists] are to be subject to this country
or independent.” Blows in reply to peaceable and respectful petitions
follow and those blows help cast the die for independence. It is the
British government, the forces of repression and reaction, which first
resort to a policy of force and violence. That government, through its
navy and its army, seeks forcibly to reduce the Americans to subordina-
tion and they, then and only then, resort to arms to defend themselves
against this force and violence.

And even yet they do not move for independence. The British
government outlaws them, blockades their ports, condemns their ships
to instant seizure, promises death to their leaders, burns their towns—
first all these things are done before history moves from Lexington in
April 1775 to the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. Truly, as
the Declaration says, “all experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable” and that govern-
ments are not “changed for light and transient causes.” No, indeed,
wrote Lenin, in the cited Letter to American Workers, “we know that
revolutions are made neither to order nor by agreement.” Yes, revolu-
tionists from Jefferson to Lenin have known well the idiocy of that
police-made fantasy — a conspiratorially-concocted, minority-maneu-
vered “revolution.”

* * *

Americans declare their independence and stake their lives and
sacred honors behind the Declaration, but in the larger and truer sense,
the peoples of the world stood behind the Declaration as they have been
and continue to be influenced and inspired by it. What are the interna-
tional ramifications of our great Declaration?

First, the document itself is written because, as its first paragraph
says, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires” that this be
done. If the people’s will is to be supreme, then their good will is
omnipotent. So, the Declaration is a broadside to humanity appealing
for their support.

Now the Congress (that new-fangled, starkly simple word that
terrified the monarchs) which adopted this Declaration had all along

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

been sensitive to world public opinion. One of the first acts of the
Continental Congress had been to appoint a Committee on Foreign
Affairs, whose main task was to send agents everywhere explaining the
justice of the American cause. (This committee is the direct ancestor of
the Department of State, an embarrassingly seditious background for
Mr. Dulles’s bailiwick!) And these agents had had notable success in
Canada, in the West Indies, in Ireland, in Europe, and in England itself.
Indeed the British Navy was hard put to keep Jamaica, Bermuda,
Barbados and the Bahamas from joining the Thirteen, and the cream of
the British army was needed during the American Revolution to
maintain benign domination in Ireland, while in England itself there
were repeated mass demonstrations on behalf of the Americans— and
British freedom. (By 1783, Britain, in the Renunciation Act, admitted
the claim of the Irish people to be bound only by their own courts and
laws.)

In France, as is well known, popular support for the American cause
merged nicely with the French king’s joy at the tribulations of his
English enemy. And it is French willingness actively to support the
colonial cause — if that cause encompassed independence, i.e., separa-
tion from England — which in turn helped induce congressional ap-
proval of independence.

Without international support the Revolution would not have
succeeded— certainly not when it did— and those signing the Declara-
tion of Independence might well have signed themselves onto the
gallows rather than into immortality. It is only fitting then that this
Revolution had colossal impact, in its success, upon the world, and the
men from a dozen countries who participated in it— from Haitians to
Hessians, from Poles to Frenchmen — helped carry with them the seeds
of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. International soli-
darity is basic to the conduct, success and impact of our Revolution.

Internationalism is central also to the origins of the Declaration’s
ideas. The 33-year-old Virginian, creating his exquisite and electric
sentences (in a room rented from a bricklayer whose father had come
from Germany) was distilling and shaping humanist and libertarian
arguments from ancient Greece and Rome; from the Irish revolutionist,
Charles Lucas; from the Italian economist, Beccaria; from the Swiss
Philosopher, Vattel, and his compatriot, Burlamaqui; from the German
jurist, Pufendorf; from the Frenchmen, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and
Diderot; from the Englishmen, Milton, Sidney, Harrington, Locke,

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

and Priestley; and from Americans, too, like Jonathan Mayhew and
John Wise. He was, indeed, moved and shaped, by the whole magnifi-
cent Age of Reason with its titans who struggled against dogma and
authoritarianism — Bacon, Vesalius, Copernicus, Spinoza . . . And all of
these were products, as they w'ere voices, of the central fact in human
history — the struggle against oppression and the dynamic, ever-
advancing nature of that struggle. The international sources of the
Declaration in no way contradict the national essence of that Declara-
tion. It remains American or, better, therefore, it is American.

With the struggle for the right of self-determination central to the
founding of our nation, and w'ith international solidarity fundamental
to the achievement of our independence, how violative of these splendid
traditions are the present policies of the American ruling class! How
incongruous it is to have the government of the United States as the
main bulwark of present-day colonialism and national suppression; to
have that government as the center of the war danger, seeking to
destroy the independence of the peoples of Indo-China, of Korea, of
Guatemala— and of all countries that have taken the path to socialism!
The ruling class pursuing such policies, besmirches the noble heritage of
our country, and threatens its best interests, as it threatens the very lives
of all of us. The whole tradition of our Revolution and the whole spirit
of our Declaration of Independence cry out against this and call for
sympathy and encouragement for all liberation efforts and a policy of
peace and friendship with all peoples everywhere.

The three main streams of the American Revolution are merged
within its finest expression, the Declaration of Independence. That
declaration is expressive of the fact of a new nationality — the Amer-
ican—and of its right to determine its own fate. Thus, when General St.
Clair read the Declaration to his troops, on July 28, 1776, he reported
that they “manifested their joy with three cheers” and he added:

It was remarkably pleasing to see the spirits of the soldiers so raised after
all their calamities; the language of every man’s countenance was: Now we
are a people: we have a name among the States of the world.*

The inter-Atlantic aspect of the Revolution and the internal, civil war
character of it appear throughout the “facts submitted to a candid
world” which make up the major portion of the Declaration’s text. And
the development of an equalitarian, democratic public opinion, with
powerful organizations mobilizing that opinion, also finds expression

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

in those “facts.” But they find particular expression in the great second
paragraph of that declaration wherein “self-evident truths” are stated,
the true purpose of government affirmed and the right of revolution
asserted.

The political theory of the Declaration is intensely democratic and
profoundly revolutionary. As Copernicus’s discarding the medieval
concept of the qualitative inferiority of the earth’s movements as
compared with those of heavenly bodies helped revolutionize astrono-
my, so Jefferson’s Declaration revolutionized political science by dis-
carding the medieval — feudal— concept of the qualitative inferiority of
earthly life as compared with eternal heavenly bliss. This life on earth,
J efferson held, was not supposed to be a vale of tears and suffering. The
meaning of life was not unending pain to be endured meekly in order to
get into heaven; and man’s pain was not his cross because of original
sin— because man was evil. And governments were not the secular arm
of the Lord, as priests were not his ecclesiastical arms.

No; this entire elaborate machine for the justification and perpetuity
of the rigidly hierarchical, non-dynamic, severely burdensome feudal
order is denied. Men are good, not evil; men are capable of governing
themseives well; governments are man-made; the purpose of life is its
ennoblement here on earth. The “freedom and happiness of man,”
Jefferson wrote to Kosciusko in 1810, are the objects of political
organization and indeed “the end of all science, of all human endeav-
or.”9

Hierarchy is, then, rejected and with it aristocracy and monarchy and
the divine right of ruler or rulers. Equality of man replaces it and
therefore sovereignty lies with these equals, and it is their will which is
divine, if anything is; at any rate it is their will which will be decisive
where government seeks their welfare. And this is dynamic, not static.
The idea of progress permeates the whole argument, for with man good,
with government well provided, surely then, as Jefferson said, his
“mind is perfectible to a degree of which we cannot form any concep-
tion,” and they speak falsely who insist “that it is not probable that
anything better will be discovered than what was known to our
fathers.”10

Hence, too, the right of revolution. For given the above, and the most
advanced democratic idea of the time that governments must rest on the
consent of the governed, it is clear that where governments oppress,
where they do not serve to further happiness, where they stifle and are

FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

engines of exploitation, they are unjust; they have then become tyranni-
cal, and acquiescence in tyranny is treason to man. Thus, Jefferson
taught, the right of revolution is axiomatic where the will of the people
is supreme.

We come, then, to the people’s “unalienable rights,” to that magnifi-
cent phrase, crashing through the corridors of history, “arousing men
to burst the chains,”11 as Jefferson himself said— “Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.” And, as we have suggested, it is that “pursuit of
happiness” as man’s right, as the just end of government which is the
heart of the revolutionary enunciation and one which, by its magnifi-
cent, timeless generalization makes the document meaningful and
stirring for all time.

That Jefferson chose this expression, rather than the usual Whig,
bourgeois-revolutionary one of “Life, Liberty and Property” was delib-
erate and reflects the advanced position of Jefferson personally and of
the revolutionary coalition which adopted it. True it is, as Ralph B.
Perry has stated, that:

Property as an inalienable right is not to be identified with any particular
institution of property, such as the private ownership of capital, or the
unlimited accumulation of wealth, or the right of inheritance, or the law of
contract.12

True it is, too, that Jefferson conceived of liberty, in the sense of
freedom of speech and press and person, and of the pursuit of happi-
ness, as more elemental, more profound than property rights and this
explains the phrase he chose. It is true, too, that Jefferson— while, of
course, being historically limited, and in no way favoring, or conceiving
of socialism, but on the contrary assuming private ownership of means
of production — was very sensitive to the concentration of property-
holding and felt it to be the central threat to democratic rights. He saw
“enormous inequality” of property ownership— especially in land— as
the cause of “so much misery to the bulk of mankind” that he insisted,
“legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing proper-
ty.”13

Yet, Jetferson, representative of the rising bourgeoisie, cannot coun-
tenance or see, and the Declaration of Independence does not
enunciate, of course, the class concept of the state. In this sense it is
philosophically idealist, limited — bourgeois. It sees man as such; not
men in class society and the state as the political superstructure and the
instrument of class domination in the given society.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

No, the revolutionary bourgeoisie sees the state, which it is capturing
and remolding, as an object in itself, standing above classes. And while
its insistence that men create it for their purposes is a qualitative leap
beyond the feudal concept, there is still an even greater distance from
the bourgeois concept to the scientific, Marxist-Leninist, concept of the
state.

This supra-class view limits, too, the Declaration’s theory of equality,
for w'hile this is revolutionary vis-a-vis feudal hierarchical notions, it is
largely illusory in terms of the material base of bourgeois society, in
terms of property and class relationship, in terms of power, all of which
considerations are vital to a scientific, real understanding of equality.

This particular limitation — a limitation of the bourgeoisie even at its
finest moment— is strongly illustrated by the fact that while the Decla-
ration spoke of equality and liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
600,000 American slaves were held to labor under the lash. And, as is
well known, a passage in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration,
excoriating the king for encouraging that abomination, the slave trade,
was cut out because of the objections of Southern slaveowners and
Northern slave-traders. This central failing of the Declaration— and of
the American Revolution— reflects the organic connection between the
rise of capitalism and the enslavement of the Negro people, as it does
the system of capitalism and the ideology and practice of racism. For it
is most certainly the presence of racism which helps account for the
revolutionists going into battle with the slogan “Liberty or Death” on
their banners and over half a million slaves on their fields. That which
Engels wrote of the Constitution is pertinent to the Declaration: “It is
significant of the specifically bourgeois character of these human rights
that the American Constitution, the first to recognize the rights of man,
in the same breath confirmed the slavery of the colored races in
America. . . .”14

It is further to be noted, as also reflective of the bourgeois limitations
of the movement inspiring the Declaration, that when it said “All men
are created equal” it did not mean all men and women, and had this
been offered for ratification the document would not have been signed.
(Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John— one of the committee of
five entrusted with drafting the Declaration: “I cannot say, that I think
you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming
peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon
retaining an absolute power over wives.”)

26 FOUNDING THE REPUBLIC

The achievement of full equality and complete liberty is the task of
the working class and its allies; it will represent the realization of
freedom— not partial, not potential, but full and actual. But this
achievement comes as the culmination of the long and painful and
magnificent human record of resistance to oppression and the seeking
of liberation.

In this great record, a place of honor is held by the American
Declaration of Independence. Butt of cynics, yet scourge of tyrants,
that Declaration, written in blood, will live so long as humanity
survives.

This birth certificate of our Republic stands in absolute opposition to
that travesty upon Americanism which usurps its name, that American
brand of fascism — McCarthyism. McCarthyism’s contempt for man,
its hatred of culture and science, its irrationalism, its cruelty and anti-
humanism, its chauvinism, its jingoism, its assault upon elemental
democratic rights, all these features of the abomination are directly and
exactly contrary to the whole spirit and content of the great Declaration
of Independence. In this sense, McCarthyism is profoundly un-Amer-
ican.

The Declaration stands today, as Lincoln said in 1859 — when a rabid
slave-owning class jeered at it as pernicious and false— as “a rebuke and
a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and
oppression.” Jefferson spoke truly when he said “that the mass of
mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored
few booted and spurred.” Today his admonition arms us: “To preserve
freedom of the human mind then, and freedom of the press, every spirit
should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom.”

We Communists will defend the Declaration of Independence even
unto the limits set by Thomas Jefferson, and we will continue to call
upon the working class and the people as a whole, to rally for this
defense. We are confident that such dedication, helping to arouse the
American people to safeguard their most beloved vital document,
threatened as it is today by an imperialist ruling class bent on destroying
it, will secure our Bill of Rights and make possible further advances in
the struggle for democracy, peace, and freedom.

Our Party, standing in the front ranks of fighters against fascism and
war, is, as its Draft Program declares, “the inheritor and continuer of
the best in American democratic, radical and labor thought and
traditions.” It is this which “is the source of its deep and abiding

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

patriotism.” It is this, too, which moves our Party “to proclaim our
fraternity with all peoples who have pioneered the new frontiers of
human history toward Socialism, with all peoples struggling to achieve
their independence and national development.”

In this patriotism and internationalism our Party draws inspiration
from, and pays its best tribute to, the American Declaration of Inde-
pendence.

Published in Political Affairs, XXXIII, July 1954, pp. 10-22.

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

The Labor Movement in the South During Slavery

The South of slavery times, though conventionally pictured as a placid
and untroubled area, actually was marked by intense and multiple
social antagonisms. The antagonism between slaves and slaveowners,
of course, was basic, but there were several others of great consequence.
Among these were the antagonisms between debtors and creditors;
landless and landed; artisans, mechanics and industrial workers on the
one hand and the owners of ships, railroads, mines, and factories, on
the other.

Some work has been done describing and analyzing the raging
conflict between slaves and slaveowners, and between non-slavehold-
ing whites (especially rural) and the slaveowners.1 But very little has
been written concerning working-class activity in the South during the
existence of slavery.

Long ago, Marx pointed out that, “In the United States of North
America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so
long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic.”2 And while slavery
would inhibit working-class organization everywhere in the United
States, including those areas where the abomination did not exist, it
would have a particularly retarding effect in the South, dominated as
that section was by slavery.

Nor is it to be believed that the slaveowners were unaware of this

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

“advantage” of their system. On the contrary, the correspondent for the
London Times in the South during the Civil War was given to under-
stand that, “The real foundation of slavery in the Southern States lies in
the power of obtaining labor at will at a rate which cannot be controlled
by any combination of laborers ”3 While wage figures for the South
prior to the Civil War are difficult to find and are widely scattered and
fragmentary, all the evidence points to the existence of a considerable
wage differential, North and South, with rates of pay “lowest in the
South,” as a government publication put it.4

Yet, the fact remains that where capitalism is, there is a working class,
and where there is a working class there is organization. Even in the
slave South, with a plantation economy characteristic, with one-third
of its entire population held as chattel slaves, and with urbanization and
industrialization severely retarded— even there a working class ap-
peared, and with it came trade-union organizations, strikes, and politi-
cal activity.

Fundamentally because of the enslavement of the Negro masses
(there were four million slaves in the South in 1860), and all that went
with this enslavement, real development of industry was severely
impeded. As a result, the growth of a working class was slow, and its
organization on the whole rudimentary. Still, some industrial develop-
ment did occur in the slave South, a working class did appear and,
consequently, the struggle between capitalists and workers is a part of
the history of that slave South. That struggle, consequential in its day,
and harbinger of a decisive component of post-Civil War Southern
history, deserves the historian’s careful attention.

With rare exceptions, however, historians of the slave South have
ignored or have slandered working-class activities. The “standard”
work in which one would expect, logically— in terms of the title’s
promise to find material on the Southern labor movement in the era
of slavery is Life and Labor in the Old South, by the late Professor
Ulrich B. Phillips, first published in 1929. In this work, however, there is
nothing on a labor movement, or trade unions. In other works, outright
anti-working class prejudices recur, sometimes expressed in almost
unbelievably crude language. For example, Professor F. Garvin
Davenport’s Ante-Bellum Kentucky: A Social History, 1800-1860
(published in 1943) exhausts the subject of labor in these two sentences:

Several towns, notably Lexington and Louisville, possessed numerous
industries which tended to alleviate the unemployment situation but at the

THF. LABOR MOV EMENT IN THE SOUTH

same time attracted many undesirable laborers, including free blacks, w'ho
became moral and social problems. Nevertheless, the gains from industry
were considered of great importance by the contemporary civic leaders and
sometimes morally irresponsible laborers were accepted by the en-
trepreneurs as a necessary evil. (pp. 23-24)

Again, Professor E. Merton Coulter, in his The Confederate States
of America, 1861-65 (published in 1950), writes: “Labor organizations
and strikes were ‘Yankee innovations’ and ‘abominations’ and were
practically unknown to the South. . . (p. 236)

Other works, not the products of Bourbon pens, normally reflect no
improvement in this regard. Thus, the ten-volume Documentary Histo-
ry of American Industrial Society (1910), edited by John R. Commons
and associates, contains very few and very brief references to Southern
labor activity. The first two volumes of The History of Labor in the
United States, also by Commons and associates (1918), covers the
period from the colonial era to 1896, but this was based almost entirely
upon Northern and Western sources.

A government publication, Strikes in the United States, by Florence
Peterson (1938) devotes a chapter to the “Early History of Strikes,” but
the South, except for reference to Baltimore, is not mentioned. The
same omission characterizes Selig Perlman’s A History of Trade
Unionism in the United States (1922); Norman J. Ware’s The Labor
Movement in the United States, 1860-1895 (1929); and Foster R.
Dulles’s Labor in America (1949).

Philip S. Foner, in his History of the Labor Movement in the United
States (Vol. 1, 1947), brings forth significant material, especially on the
relation of the labor movement in the South to slavery. However, there
is still a paucity of work in this area.

In the pages that follow, an attempt is made to record something of
the history of the labor movement in the South prior to the abolition of
slavery. It is hoped that the effort will not be altogether unworthy of its
subject, and that it may serve to stimulate further study of this neglected
field.

It is necessary first to dispel the illusion that the South of slavery
times was an area containing nothing but plantations and farms, an
area devoid of cities and of industry. It is, of course, true that the nation
as a whole up to the Civil War was predominantly rural — only 20
percent of the population in the United States lived in cities in 1860.
And it is also true that the South was very much behind the North
(especially after 1840) in the development of industry and marine and

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

land transportation, but it is equally true that the South was far from
having no such developments.

In I860 there were over 110,000 workers employed in 20,000 manufac-
turing establishments in the South-about 10 percent of the national
total. The factories represented a capital investment of S96 million,
which may be compared with the quarter of a billion invested in
manufacturing establishments at that time in New England.5 As one
would expect under such circumstances, railroad building was con-
centrated outside the slave area, but there was some in the South. In
1860 national railroad mileage totaled 30,636, of which almost 11,000
was in the South.6

The population density of the South was very much lower than that
of the North — in the pre-Civil War decade Virginia had a population
density of 14 per square mile as compared with 127 per square mile in
Massachusettes— but still there were cities in the South and some of
them were quite large. Indeed, of the dozen most populous American
cities in I860, four were in the slave area— Baltimore, New Orleans, St.
Louis, and Louisville— and these ranked third, fifth, seventh and
eleventh, respectively, Louisville having 68,000 inhabitants and Bal-
timore 212,000. Other Southern cities, like Charleston, Richmond,
Mobile and Norfolk, had considerable populations for their day with a
high concentration of working people.7

The leading industries in the slave South were flour, lumber, and
tobacco. Of consequence, too, were the textile, iron, leather, and
turpentine industries. Mining of gold and coal, the manufacturing of
hemp and the production of cotton gins likewise were of some impor-
tance in the South. The skills and tasks connected with the shipping of
goods in such ocean and river ports as New Orleans, Mobile,
Wilmington, and Memphis also required thousands of working people.

The data show the industrial development of the slave South, then, to
have been on a quite rudimentary level, with processing plants and
transportation the major areas of employment of the nascent working
class. This backwardness was due, of course, to the overwhelmingly
slave-plantation economy of the South.

Nevertheless, we do find in this predominantly agrarian slave South,
quite a few cities, some industry, a fairly well-developed transportation
system, and the existence of a significant class of workers in factories,
aboard ships, at ports, on railroads and canals, and as mechanics,
artisans, and unskilled laborers. Many of these workers and artisans

THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

were slaves— owned or hired by their employers— and many were free
workers (including free Negroes). In addition, during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, many workers were in a stage between chattel
enslavement and wage employment, i.e., they were indentured servants,
laboring, without pay, for a limited number of years.

The slaves, both the minority in the cities and the majority on the
plantations, struggled fiercely for freedom, in ways ranging from
individual flight to collective uprising.8 Great militancy also charac-
terized the behavior of the indentured servants, Negro and white, of the
South.9

And the free Southern urban worker organized and struggled,
economically and politically, to improve his conditions. He did this
gropingly, on the whole, and he was beset by serious confusions and
limitations, but that he did it at all, in the face of the existence of slavery,
attests to his courage, to the inexorable quality of working-class
organization and to the irreconcilable nature of class conflict between
worker and capitalist.

Collective activity and struggle on the part of the working people in
the United States dates back to the eighteenth century, and some of
these pioneer strivings occurred in the South.

A generation prior to the Revolution, skilled Southern workers in
several cities protested the competitive use of slaves and demanded that
this cease, a recurrent theme in Southern labor history.10 During this
period there is record of at least one case of collective effort on the part
of workers to raise their pay. This involved free Negro chimney
sweepers of Charleston who, in 1763, “had the insolence” as the city’s
Gazette put it, “by a combination amongst themselves, to raise the
usual prices, and to refuse doing their work, unless their exorbitant
demands are complied with.” Such activities, continued the paper, “are
evils that require some attention to suppress,” but just what was the
outcome of this particular effort is not known.11

Societies of mechanics, artisans and other workers, that played so
important a part in the origins and organizational features of the
Revolution itself, existed in the South as well as elsewhere. One such
society, the Charles T own Mechanics Society, for example, formed the
backbone of the South Carolina “Liberty Party” which, as early as
1766, urged American independence.12

The immediate post-revolutionary period was marked by the forma-
tion of numerous workingmen's benevolent societies and the beginning

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

of their transformation into weapons for increasing wages and other-
wise improving working conditions, that is, into trade unions. Once
again, this movement was by no means confined to the North. On the
contrary, the 1780s and 1790s saw bakers, bricklayers, carpenters, and
other skilled workers actively campaigning, in collective fashion, for
increased pay in Virginia and the Carolinas. Such groups and such
efforts faced, in addition to employer resistance, legal prosecution, as
when, in 1783, the carpenters and bricklayers of Charleston were
charged with conspiracy because they had combined for the purpose of
raising their wages. Bakers of Charleston struck in 1786, while that
city's famous Mechanics’ Society demanded higher pay in 1794. 13

At about the same time a Society of Journeymen Tailors was formed
in Baltimore, and there is record of a strike conducted by it at least as
early as 1795. The central issue was the rate of wages, and in this case an
increase was won. Seamen in Baltimore also succeeded in winning a pay
raise, by a strike, in 1795. 14

Nationally, the firm beginnings of an organized labor movement date
from the nineteenth century, and this is as true of the South as of the rest
of the nation. Leading in this development were the workers of Bal-
timore-third most populous city in the country prior to the Civil War
and while a border city rather than characteristically Southern, still one
in which slavery was significant. The printers of Baltimore were
organized by 1803, while its tailors conducted successful strikes for
higher wages in 1805, 1807, and 1808. The cordwainers (shoemakers)
were also quite active during these years and attempted by a strike, in
1809, to obtain a closed shop. The effort failed, and thirty-nine of their
leaders were arrested and tried for conspiracy. The records in these
cases are poorly preserved, but it appears that one of the workers was
found guilty, while the others were acquitted. Seamen successfully
struck for higher pay in Baltimore in 1805 and 1807. 15

Other bits of evidence demonstrate the existence of similar trends at
this time elsewhere in the South. 'I hus, it is clear that a Mechanics
Society was formed in 1806 in New Orleans and the same city witnessed,
four years later, the establishment of a typographical workers union.
Again, Charleston carpenters were organized by 1809, and in 1811 there
existed a journeymen cordw'ainers’ union in Lexington, Kentucky.16

The Second War for Independence waged against England, 1812-15,
and the policies and legislation associated with that w'ar, produced a
considerable spurt in industrialization. This process continued in the

THE labor movement in the south

nostwar years and helped stimulate mass political activity. It helped lay
he groundwork, too, for an aroused labor consciousness in the twen-
ties and thirties. This development did not skip the South.

Indicative is the fact that labor newspapers, which now made their
initial appearance, were published in the South as well as elsewhere.
First among them was the Southern Free Press issued in Charleston in
1825. Within the next decade labor papers appeared in Delaware,
Maryland, Missouri, Virginia, Alabama, and Louisiana.1'

Labor organization went ahead. Charleston clerical workers had
formed their own society by 1825. Four years later some 250 Baltimore
weavers struck against wage reductions. Their leaders were arrested
and tried for conspiracy, but they won an acquittal.18 Trade unions
were, in fact, common in the South by the 1830s. Before the end of the
decade, the printers of Columbia, Charleston, Augusta, Louisville, St.
Louis Richmond, Nashville, Natchez, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee
were organized. Strikes for higher wages were conducted at this time by
these workers in Richmond, Louisville, and New Orleans.19

In the early thirties there were at least seven trade unions in Louisville
and an even greater number in Baltimore. In the latter city a strike o
journeymen hatters against a wage reduction led, in 1833, to a wide-
spread sympathy strike. This, in turn, precipitated the formation ot a
Union Trade Society having seventeen associated unions— one ol the
first central trades unions in the United States. This organization was
among the pioneers in the demand for the ten-hour day, central to the
entire labor movement at the time, and also in making common cause
with women workers, for a union of women needleworkers joined the
Union Trade Society in 1834. Earlier, in October 1833, these women,
organized in the Female Union Society of Jailoresses and Seam-
stresses, had struck for higher wages, supported by the Journeymen

Tailors.20 . . .

By this time strong organizations of workers existed in St. Louis.

Among those having trade unions were the printers, carpenters, plas-
terers, joiners, cabinet makers, tinners, and barbers. St. Louis cabinet
makers struck in 1837, without success, for a raise, but the same year the
plasterers, led by Henry B. Miller, won their demand for $2.50 per day.

The workers of St. Louis annually took to the streets in massive
parades, on July 4th, in which were raised demands for higher wages
and, particularly, the ten-hour day. Other major workers’ demonstra-
tions occurred in this decade in Southern cities, notably the mass

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

meeting held in the New Orleans public square in 1835 protesting
against the use of slave labor. This significant demonstration was
dispersed by the state militia at the governor’s order.21

It is the thirties, too, which witness the real beginnings of the railroad
and canal network binding together the United States. The workers
who built these means of transportation under brutal conditions of
exploitation (some were slaves), were far from docile, and their militan-
cy was demonstrated in the South, as elsewhere.

One of the first Southern railroads was the Charleston and Ham-
burg, and its construction workers struck in 1832, only to be crushed by
the militia. Again, in 1836, the workers laying the trackage of the
Wilmington and Susquehanna struck in Chestertown, Maryland. Be-
fore this bid for better working conditions was broken by railroad-hired
thugs and militia, five workers were killed and ten wounded.22

Strikes and outbreaks, reaching near insurrectionary proportions,
marked the building in Maryland of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal!
From 1834 through 1839, the workers struck repeatedly, despite com-
pany spies and armed terror. (This included, in 1834, the use of Federal
troops— the first time such troops were used as strikebreakers. See: R.
B. Morris, in The American Historical Review, October 1949.) Typical
was this report in a Baltimore publication of the time (Niles’ Weekly
Register, Feb. 21, 1835):

There has been another riot on the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. . . . Many
laborers, on a certain section, turned-out for higher wages, and would
neither work themselves, nor let others work. A troop of horse, and a
company of riflemen, with directions to use force to preserve public peace,
happily reduced the rioters to order, and drove them away. To refuse such
persons employment is the surest way to check a riotous spirit.

This by no means, however, cowed the workers. Sporadic strikes
occurred in the following months, to be capped by a great stoppage of
work in the summer of 1838. The state militia was ordered out again,
but some refused to serve as strikebreakers and a few actually threat-
ened to fight on the side of the workers. In August 1838 an increase in
pay was granted, but 130 especially militant workers were fired. A year
later another mass strike occurred near Cumberland, Maryland, which
was broken by the arrest of 30 leaders and their being sentenced to
prison terms ranging from one to eighteen years.23

Similarly, hard struggles marked the James River and Kanawha
Company’s canal-building near Richmond in 1838. Here were employ-

THL LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

ed 500 workers, of whom about 150 w'ere slaves, the rest white wage
workers. In May and June the hired workers struck, demanding higher
wages, but the strike was broken when most of those out were fired and
replaced by 300 slaves. There are also somewhat vague evidences of
strikes among the workers of the Central Railroad of Georgia in 1841
and the South Carolina Canal and Railroad in 1845.24

Further examples of Southern working-class activity in the forties
come from Missouri, Louisiana, and Virginia. Workers in Missouri
centered their efforts at this time around the demand for the ten-hour
day. More or less sporadic meetings around this theme developed into
great labor conventions which, in turn, gave birth to working-class
political parties of considerable influence in Missouri during the de-
cade.

Thus, in March 1840, journeymen brickmakers met in St. Louis,
pledged to combat vigorously capital’s encroachments, “as a duty to
ourselves, our families, and our posterity,” and announced their ad-
herence to the Ten-Hour System. A labor convention with delegates
from twenty-three crafts and occupations assembled in the same city on
July 2, 1840, and resolved to fight for the ten-hour day. (These included
boatmen, bookbinders, blacksmiths, bricklayers, cabinet-makers, car-
penters, carters, coachmen, drayers, hatters, laborers, lime-burners,
machinists, painters, plasterers, saddlers, sheet-metal workers, ship
carpenters, shoemakers, silversmiths, stonemasons, tailors, and tobac-
co workers.) From this developed the short-lived, but powerful. Me-
chanics’ and Workingmen’s Party of Missouri. Strikes were also
resorted to by these workers during this period, the most notable
occurring in 1845 when the shipw'orkers of St. Louis struck for higher
wages and won.25

In the same decade, in Louisville, Kentucky, the bricklayers
organized with the objective of achieving the ten-hour day but, facing
the competition of slaves, they failed. So, also — and for the same
reason — did the carpenters and painters of that city fail in a strike for a
shorter work day, but the stonecutters, without slave competition,
succeeded in gaining the ten-hour day.26

Mechanics and printers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge partici-
pated in active struggles during the forties. Outstanding was the action
of Baton Rouge mechanics in leaving their city in protest against the
competitive use of convict labor, an action which resulted in the
elimination of the grievance in 1845. 27

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

One of the most important of pre-Civil War strikes occurred in
Richmond in 1847. This took place in the South’s leading iron mill, the
Tredegar Iron Works. The white workers, led by one named Gatewood
Talley, demanded a raise in wages and the abandonment of the use of
slaves in the plant. The press of the city and the region was particularly
vicious in combatting this strike, denouncing it as akin to abolitionism
(i.e., in their eyes, treason) and as threatening to “wholly destroy the
value of slave property.”

T he strikers, occupying company-owned houses, were evicted, the
leaders arrested, at the mayor’s order, on the charge of conspiracy, and
additional slave workers were purchased and hired (that is, rented from
their masters). After weeks of resistance, these strike-breaking mea-
sures succeeded, and thereafter this iron mill operated, until and
through the Civil War, very largely with slave labor. The slaves,
themselves, caused keen concern for the boss, especially because of
frequent flight.28

A somewhat similar event occurred the same year on a Louisiana
sugar plantation. A slaveowner replaced his unfree labor force with
about one hundred Irish and German immigrants. An English visitor
reported the result:

In the middle of the harvest they all struck for double pay. No others were

to be had, and it was impossible to purchase slaves in a few days. In that

short time he lost produce to the value of ten thousand dollars.

The planter returned to slave labor.29

Workers were markedly militant during the 1850s in several Southern
states. Thus, about 1850, the cotton screwmen of New Orleans, (work-
ers who, using large jackscrews, packed cotton bales into the holds of
ships), organized the Screwmen’s Beneficial Association, and con-
ducted successful strikes for higher wages in 1854 and 1858. By 1860
practically all the workers of that craft in New Orleans were unionized.
Seamen and longshoremen in the same city struck repeatedly for better
pay in 1851 and 1852. There is evidence also of the existence of
Agricultural and Mechanical Societies, as well as Mechanics’ Societies
in Baton Rouge and New Orleans during the same period, and these
represented additional forms of worker organization.30

In 1852 the New Orleans Typographical Union was reorganized
(under the leadership of Gerard Stith, later mayor of the city) and
greatly strengthened. The next year the members struck against the
city’s newspapers, and although strikebreakers were imported from

THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

New York City, the determination of the local workers remained firm.
Their efforts were successful and a raise of 25 percent was won.31

In 1857 under the leadership of Richard Trevellick, who had been
active in the struggle for an eight-hour day in his native Australia (and
was to be a very important post-Civil War labor leader), the ship
carpenters and caulkers of New Orleans formed a union. This suc-
ceeded in obtaining a nine-hour day for its members. Longshoremen
and deckhands, undoubtedly stimulated by all this activity, themselves
took the road of organization, also in the fifties. Strikes by these
workers occurred frequently and, in 1858 the slave state of Louisiana
passed a law' prohibiting strikes or work stoppages on ships or at freight
wharves.32 Arrests as a result of this law were common in Louisiana for
several years thereafter. Roger Shugg, in his pioneering work, Origins
of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), wrote: “The free
worker in New Orleans was in danger of losing his freedom and being
pulled into the orbit of slavery.”33

There is a record of the unionization of carpenters in Hopkinsville,
Ashland, and Paducah, Kentucky; and of typographical workers in
Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, Raleigh, North Carolina, and
Petersburg, Virginia, in the 1850s.34 Petersburg was the scene of another
example of labor activity in 1854. The owner of a sawmill near that city
called for a longer w'ork day. The workers struck, threatened to ride the
boss on a rail, and marched in a protest demonstration to the city. There
was no increase in hours.35

An inconclusive strike of typographical workers occurred in Char-
leston, South Carolina in 1853, and in 1857 the workers in William
Gregg’s loudly ballyhooed “model” textile mill in Graniteville, of the
same state, struck for higher wages. Here, too, the result is not on
record.36

At the same time iron molders in the South were organizing. South-
ern locals of the National Molders Union, led by William H. Sylvis —
later, founder of the National Labor Union — were formed in the fifties
in Richmond, Memphis, St. Louis, Baltimore and Louisville. In several
instances, as in St. Louis in 1858 and in Baltimore in 1860, hard-fought
strikes were conducted.37

Another pioneer national trade union, the American Miners’ Asso-
ciation, parent of the U.M.W.A., had some of its roots in a slave state.
Two strikes of miners occurred in the 1850s in the Cumberland coalfield
in Maryland, where about 350 men worked. In 1850-51, these men

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

the labor movement in the south

struck for six weeks against the bosses’ demand for a wage cut and an
agreement barring work stoppages. The workers won. In 1854,
however, the workers lost in their demand for 40 cents a ton of coal
(they accepted 30 cents) after being out fourteen weeks and facing the
armed might of the state militia. There is a direct line connecting these
militant actions and the formation in 1861 of the American Miners’
Association.38

The decade of the fifties was marked, too, by several strikes among
Southern railroad workers. Notable was the strike in South Carolina,
early in 1855, of workers employed by the North Eastern Railroad. The
men sought to increase their pay from $1 per day to $1.25, but the state
crushed it by arresting twenty-three of the leaders, charging them with
“inspiring terror” and seeking “an unlawful end.” All were fined and
jailed.39 More successful was the effort of the workers in Memphis
employed by the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. In 1860 these
workers felt sufficiently well organized to demand a one-hour reduction
in their eleven-hour day. After prolonged struggles, marked by large-
scale demonstrations and public meetings, the workers won their
demands.40

Marxism appeared in the United States during the decade prior to
the Civil War, and its influence was felt in that period in the South as
well as the North.41 William Z. Foster, in his History of the Communist
Party of the United States (p. 39) points to the heroic anti-slavery
activity of Marxists in the South, such as Adolph Douai in Texas and
Hermann Meyer in Alabama. Their activity, however, was not confined
to opposition to slavery. They were Marxists and so, while of course
fighting against slavery, the central task of the time, they also projected
programs and participated in efforts of the working class as such.

There were Marxist groups, overwhelmingly German in composi-
tion, in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and
Texas. Out of a total of 600,000 people in Texas in 1860, over 20,000
were Germans, living in the western part of the state and shunning the
employment of slave labor. To many of these settlers, and especially to
the large segment among them who were political refugees from the
1848 revolution, Marxism was more or less familiar.

In the early fifties Marxist clubs and organizations had appeared
amongst these German settlers in Texas, and in 1853 Adolph Douai
began publishing the Stan Antonio Zeitung, ein Sozial- Demokratisches
Blattfur die Deutschen in West Texas. (San Antonio Times, a Social-

Democratic newspaper for the Germans in West Texas.) By 1854, the
Austin State Times (May 19) was delicately hinting: “The contiguity of
the San Antonio River to the Zeitung office, we think suggests the

suppression of that paper. Pitch in.”42

Two years later— a time of tremendous slave unrest throughout the
South— though the press itself was not destroyed, Douai was forced, in
peril of his life, to flee the South. It was the whole democratic
orientation of his paper, its firm espousal of the abolition of slavery,
and its Marxist approach, which produced its forcible suppression by
the Texas slaveowners.43

In 1850 a German Workmen’s Convention met in Philadelphia. 1 he
Marxist influence at this gathering was potent. Its forty-four delegates
each representing 100 workers, discussed trade union and political
perspectives. Of the six cities sending delegates, three— St. Louis,
Baltimore and Louisville— were in the slave area.44 The next year a
German Social-Democratic Association was founded in Richmond
which remained of sufficient consequence, during the fifties, to be
denounced intermittently by the local press.45 Similarly, it is of some
interest to note that Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia turned to red-
baiting and anti-Semitism in his 1853 campaign, announcing that his
opponents were not merely tools of the Abolitionists, but were also

“German Jews [and] Red Republicans.”46

A radical German-language newspaper, showing distinct Marxist
influence, Per Wecker( The Awakener) was established in Baltimore by
Carl Heinrich Schnauffer, poet, 1848 revolutionist, and political re-
fugee. This paper called for the organization of trade unions, an eight-
hour day, universal suffrage, and the abolition of slavery. After
Schnauffer’s death in 1854 his wife edited the paper for three years,
when Wilhelm Rapp, another ’48er, and president of Baltimore’s
Turnerbund, became editor. He continued its politically advanced
policies, and supported Lincoln in the election of 1860. In April 1861 a
mob drove Rapp out of Baltimore, but Mrs. Schnauffer heroically and
successfully defended the press, and continued the paper’s publica-
tion.47

A newspaper of similar character was founded by another 48er in
Louisville in 1854. The Herolddes Westens, edited by Karl Heinzen (an
early associate of Marx who later turned against Marxism), denounced
slavery, called for “the protection of the laboring classes from the
capitalists” and advocated universal suffrage, including the enfran-

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

chisement of women. It demanded the enactment of minimum wage
and maximum hour laws, and the granting, without charge, of public
lands to bonafide settlers. A like-inclined newspaper, the Deutsche
Zeitung, appeared about this time in New Orleans48 and boldly sup-
ported “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Fremont” [the Re-
publican presidential candidate] in the election of 1856.

The program of the Richmond Social-Democratic Association, as
put forth in 1854, survives and no doubt epitomizes the program of
Marxist, and near-Marxist, Southern groups prior to the Civil War.
This association demanded the emancipation of the slaves, the wide
dispersal of land ownership, the nationalization of the railroads, “the
amelioration of the condition of the working class,” by providing an
eight-hour day for adults and a five-hour day for children, by the
development of trade unions and workingmen’s societies, by a mechan-
ics lien law, free public education, abolition of imprisonment for debt,
and a revision of the system of taxation so that it would be based on the
capacity to pay. It advocated the popular election of all officeholders by
universal suffrage, with the power of recall vested in the electorate.49

Of course, the labor movement in the South was still in its elementary
stages and is not to be thought of as offering anything like decisive
weight in the whole Southern struggle against the Bourbon oligarchy.
This struggle was waged in the main by the Negro masses and by the
non-slaveholding whites who made their bare and precarious living by
tilling the soil.

However, among these non-slaveholding whites of country and city,
racism was rampant. It was the single most important ideological
instrument the Bourbons had for the maintenance of their system. This
helped make impossible any fully effective struggle against the ruling
class on the part of its victims. It prevented the non-slaveholding
whites, in factory or farm, from developing a policy and a program in
cooperation with the Negro people that might have resulted in actually
defeating the slaveowners.

Yet, the marked militancy of Southern wage workers in the 1850s is
part of the whole pattern of increased opposition to slavocratic domi-
nation which is so significant a component of Southern history in the
pre-Civil War decade. Other aspects of this developing threat to
Bourbon power in terms of rising slave disaffection, numerous in-
stances of Negro-white unity in slave plots and uprisings, and the
economic and political opposition of non-slaveholding whites (urban

THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

and rural) to the planters’ dictatorship, together with the reasons
therefore, have been examined elsewhere.50

The Bourbons met these threats with increasingly harsh repression,
and they followed the same course in meeting the appearance and
development of working-class organization and activity. In a slave
society, labor was considered loathsome, and the ruling class of the
American slave society detested and feared working people. “Free
society!” exclaimed a Georgia newspaper in 1856, “we sicken at the
name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy
operatives, smallfisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists?” Mer-
chants and capitalists, said a South Carolina newspaper during the
same period, were not unduly hostile to a slaveholding society, “but the
mechanics, most of them, are pests to society, dangerous among the
slave populations and ever ready to form combinations against the
interest of the slaveholder, against the laws of the country, and against
the peace of Commonwealth.”51

More and more, in law and in theory and in fact, the rulers ot the
slave South tried to eliminate the distinction between chattel slavery
and wage labor. As we have seen, this led a careful historian of the
question in one state (Roger Shugg’s study of Louisiana) to write that,
in the fifties, the free worker was being pulled more and more “into the
orbit of slavery.” Long before, contemporaneously, indeed, Karl Marx
had stated:

Between 1856 and 1860 the political spokesmen, jurists, moralists and
theologians of the slaveholders’ party had already sought to prove not so
much that Negro slavery is justified, but rather that color is a matter of
indifference, and the working class is everywhere born to slavery.52

The facts concerning the organizational efforts of Southern free
workers, and the bitter resistance to these efforts by the Southern
rulers, give added substance to Marx’s fundamental evaluation of the
Civil War:

The present struggle between the South and the North is, therefore,
nothing but a struggle between two social systems, between the system of
slavery and the system of free labor.53

The Southern masses, Negro and white, hated the Bourbons. This
hatred intensified as the slave system aged and became increasingly
oligarchic and tyrannical. It is, in part, this increasing disaffection of
the home population which drove the slaveowning class to the desper-
ate expedient of seeking, forcibly, to overthrow the government of the

PRELUDE TO CIV IL WAR

THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

United States— to defy the election results of 1860 and to retain their
paramount power, in the South at least, by armed secession.

Just as fear and hatred of the masses in the South was consequential
in moving the slaveholders to undertake their armed counter-revolu-
tionary attempt, so the masses’ hatred for those slaveholders was of
great consequence in helping to defeat that attempt. Secession was
accomplished against the will of the vast majority of Southern people,
and the collapse of the Confederacy was due not only to the pounding
of the Union forces (in which, by the way, served scores of thousands of
Southerners, Negro and white), and to the superiority of the Union’s
industrial might and population potential. That collapse, complete as it
was, cannot be understood if one does not understand that the Con-
federacy never had the devotion of the majority of Southerners. The
Negro masses, 35 percent of the South’s total population, detested the
Confederacy as the instrument of their enslavers, and their activity in
opposition to that government and in support of Lincoln’s was of
fundamental importance in the Confederacy’s defeat.

Moreover, most of the Southern white masses opposed the Con-
federacy and this, too, was fundamental in explaining its collapse. Over
1 10,000 soldiers deserted the Confederate army, many taking their guns
with them. Most of these men successfully resisted recapture because of
the people s sympathy and assistance, and many in organized detach-
ments offered battle to regular units of the Confederate army. Major
cities were besieged by these Southern opponents of Jefferson Davis’
government, and other areas of the South, particularly in the mountain
districts, never were won over to secession. Other forms of disaffection
among the white masses had devastating effects upon the strength and
stability of the Davis regime. These included, most notably, the so-
called Bread Riots, led by impoverished working women, in Virginia,
North Carolina and Alabama. Here hundreds, and, at time, thousands
of women (and, seeing their example, some men) gathered together and
marched, armed with clubs, etc., upon stores and helped themselves to
food for their starving families. In other cases army commissary
supplies, and even army supplies in transit, were forcibly taken by
Southern women facing destitution in the “rich man’s war and the poor
man’s fight’’ that the slaveowners had launched.

Of great consequence, too, were the numerous Peace, and Union
Societies which sprang up by the hundreds throughout the South.
These became more and more numerous as the slaughter continued.

Their political influence in large areas of the Confederacy was potent
and continued to mount throughout the war.54 It was the poor, in
countryside and city, who formed the mass base of these groups.

part of this larger story is the fact that the trade-union and organiza-
tional stirrings of Southern workers, which, as we have seen, were
present in the pre-Civil War generation and reached a high point in the
fifties, continued during the Civil War itself. We turn, then, to a
consideration of Southern labor activity during the war years.

The necessities of fighting led to the development of industrialization
in the South during the war. As a result, additional thousands of
workers, including many women, appeared. These workers, plagued by
an inflation which far outstripped occasional and tiny wage increases,
often turned to organization and sometimes to strikes in order to force
some improvements in starvation conditions. While this militancy
appears, the presence of slavery— during the war years, as before-
prevented the workers from really breaking through and achieving
thorough organization or substantial gains.

The workers could and did withstand court processes, frame-ups,
violence and even impressment into the army — all these methods were
used by the bosses to break up the workers’ organizational efforts. But
the workers could not overcome the bosses’ prime weapon, slavery. 1 he
impressment of slaves into ordnance works, railroads (slaves were used
in all positions, including those of brakemen and firemen), maritime,
and some factory work could, and did, vanquish war-time struggles of
the free workers. Never more vividly than during the Civil War, in the
South, was confirmed the truth of Marx’s statement: “Labor cannot
emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black skin it is branded.

The reports of Southern strikes during the Civil War are exceedingly
fragmentary, and undoubtedly many went completely unrecorded. Still
enough is at hand to show that wage workers of the South struggled
militantly during the war to better their conditions.

During the first year of the fighting, workers in the Confederacy’s
largest ironworks— the Tredegar plant in Richmond— struck for higher
wages, but the outcome of this struggle is not known. In 1862 several
strikes were reported in Secessia’s capital city, including among harness
workers, lithographers, typographers and cemetery workers. The ceme-
tery workers were fired and replaced by slaves; the lithographers and
typographers saw their leaders arrested and jailed for “conspiracy” and
this broke their effort; the outcome in the case of the harness workers is

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

not known. Machinists in the shops of the Virginia & Tennessee
Railroad in Lynchburg also went on strike in 1862. Their strike was
broken when the Confederacy conscripted the strikers into the army

Conscription also broke a strike of the workers in the Richmond
armory in 1863, while the outcome of the strike of shoemakers in that
city the same year is unknown. One of the few successful strikes during
the war was carried out in 1863 in Richmond, by women workers
employed in the Confederate States Laboratory. These workers won a
wage increase, but when they struck again in 1864, all were fired. A
strike for higher pay by the Confederate postal clerks was partially
successful, some increase being obtained.55

Machinists, smiths, and other workers at the armory in Macon,
Georgia, and at the Shelby Iron Company in Columbiana, Georgia,
went on strike in 1863 for a wage increase. In both cases the outcome is
unceitain. In March 1864 the chief of the Macon armory informed
General Josiah Gorgas, over-all commander of Confederate ordnance,
that the workers “generally were so much dissatisfied with the wages
allowed them that it is impossible to get them to apply themselves to
their work in anything like a satisfactory manner.” By May 1864 the
wage workers in this Macon armory were again ready to strike and now
the situation was met by replacing all of them with requisitioned slave
laborers.56 During the same period workers struck at the Naval Ord-
nance Works in Atlanta. 1 hey demanded higher pay, but once again,
the outcome is not clear from available records.57

One of the most extensive and best organized strikes among South-
ern workers in the Confederacy involved telegraph operators, civil and
military. These workers announced in October 1863 the formation of a
Confederate-wide Southern Telegraphic Association, the leading of-
ficers of which were Charles A. Gaston of Mobile, J. S. Clarke of
Charleston, C. F. Barnes of Augusta, and W. H. Clarke of Savannah.

The telegraph operators worked six days a week from 7 in the
morning to 10 in the evening, and put in 4 hours on Sunday— i.e., a 94-
hour week! They declared, when announcing the existence of their
Association, that, “Our rights have not been respected by the various
telegraph companies, and they have recently used the conscript law of
the Confederate States as a means to intimidate us to succumb to
demands we consider unfair and tyrannical.” The bosses remained
adamant and telegraph operators throughout the Confederacy struck
in January 1864 for a closed shop, higher pay, and a shorter work day.

THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

The slavocrat press denounced the workers as conspirators and
traitors and urged that all of them be drafted and then, in uniform,
returned to their jobs.58 Exactly this was done, after the men had held
firm for a month. They were conscripted and forced to work at pay that
equalled seventeen (Confederate) dollars a month!59

The last session of the Confederate Congress had under considera-
tion several bills which outlawed strikes and trade unions entirely, or
any kind of collective activity on the part of wage workers. There is no
doubt that had the war continued another year such legislation would
have been passed by the Davis regime, enemy that the regime was to
human freedom in general.

Hitherto it has been generally held that the labor movement by-
passed the slave South. It is certainly true that the slave South was
overwhelmingly agrarian and this itself limited the possibility of a
major labor movement. It is also true that the existence of slavery
militated against the development of a numerous working class in the
cities, and in any case against the development of a large-scale, effective
labor organization. In this sense, a basic lesson of the history of the
labor movement in the slave South is the catastrophic cost to the white
working population in particular, as well as to the South as a whole, of
the enslavement of the Negro people.

Nevertheless, to see the picture in its entirety, it is important to
understand that cities and ports, railroads and canals, factories and
mines did exist in the slave South, and that these were made useful and
productive, there as everywhere, by working men and women, among
whom were wage workers as well as slaves. These free workers, facing
the exploitation of their bosses, did organize to oppose or to limit their
exploitation.

In the slave South trade unions were formed, strikes were conducted,
and a labor press and labor parties were brought into being. In the slave
South, Marxists and bourgeois-democratic revolutionaries (many of
them very much influenced by Marxism) lived and worked. Marxism
helped plant the seed of class consciousness, independent political
action and Negro-white unity in the pre-Civil War South.

This working-class movement is part of the opposition to slavocrat
domination which is so decisive a part of Southern history. Its upsurge
in the 1850s is part, too, of the rising threat to Bourbon power which
characterizes the pre-Civil War decade and strongly affected ruling-
class policy. And labor unrest and militancy are facets of the mass

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

opposition within the South, to the slaveholders’ Confederate govern-
ment, an opposition of fundamental consequence in causing that
government’s collapse.

Finally, the history of labor struggles in the slave South is a precious
part of the entire and continuing effort of the American working class
to fully and effectively organize itself. It is part of the not-to-be-denied
struggle of the American working class, the Negro people, the farming,
and toiling masses generally, to produce a United States of equality,
security, democracy, and peace for all.

Published as a pamphlet, The Labor Movement in the South During
Slavery (New York: International Publishers, 1954).

Class Conflicts in the South: 1850-1860

The great attention given to the spectacular political struggles between
the North and the South in the decade before the Civil War has tended
to befog the equally important contests which went on during the same
period within the South itself.

Writers have dealt at considerable length with the national scene,
have demonstrated a growing conflict between an agrarian, slave-labor
society and an increasingly industrial, free-labor society as to which
should direct public opinion, enact and administer the laws, appropri-
ate the West— in short, which should control the state. In 1860 the grip
of the slave civilization upon the national government was very consid-
erably loosened and clearly seemed destined to complete annihilation.
The slavocracy therefore turned to bullets.

But there was more to it than that. The facts are that not only did the
slavocrats see their external, or national, power seriously menaced by
the Republican triumph of 1860, but they also observed their internal,

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

1 power greatly threatened by increasing restlessness among the
vnloited classes— the non-slaveholding whites and the slaves.

6 There were three general manifestations of this unrest: (1) slave
disaffection, shown in individual acts of “insolence” or terrorism, and
in concerted, planned efforts for liberation; (2) numerous instances of
noor-white implication in the slave conspiracies and revolts, showing a
declining efficiency in the divide-and-rule policy of the Bourbons; (3)
independent political action of the non-slaveholding whites aimed at
the destruction of the slavocracy’s control of the state governments.
This growing internal disaffection is a prime explanation for the
desperation of the slaveholding class which drove it to the expedient ol

Factors tending to explain the slave unrest of the decade are soil
exhaustion, leading to greater work demands, improved ma^UnS
facilities, having the same result, and economic depression, 1854-56,
throughout the South, approaching, especially in 1855, the famine
stage These years witnessed, too, a considerable increase in industrial-
ization and urbanization within the South. These phenomena' were
distinctly not conducive to the creation of happy slaves. As a
slaveholder remarked,2 “The cities is no place for niggers. 1 hey get
strange notions into their heads, and grow discontented. They ought,
every one of them, to be sent back to the plantations.” As a matter of
fact there was for this reason, during this decade, an attempt to foster a
“back-to-the-plantation” movement.

It is also true, as Frederick L. Olmsted observed,3 that: “Any great
event having the slightest bearing upon the question of emancipation is
known to produce an unwholesome excitement” among the slaves. The
decade is characterized by such events as the 1850 Compromise the
sensation caused by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Kansas War, the 1856
election, the Dred Scott decision, Helper’s Impending Crisis, John
Brown’s raid, and the election of 1860. If to this is added the political
and social struggles within the South itself (to be described later), it
becomes apparent that there were many occasions for “unwholesome

excitement.” . .

Combined with all this is a significant change in the Abolitionist
movement. Originally this aimed at gradual emancipation induced by
moral suasion. Then came the demand for immediate liberation, but
still only via moral suasion. Then followed a split into those favoring
political action and those opposed. Finally, and most noticeably in this

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

decade, there arose a body of direct actionists whose idea was to “carry
the war into Africa.”

The shift is exemplified in the person of Henry C. Wright. In the
forties he wrote the “Non-Resistant” column for Garrison’s Liberator.
By 1851 he felt it was the duty of Abolitionists to go South and aid the
slaves to flee, and by 1859 he was convinced4 that it was “the right and
duty of the slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the
North to incite them to resistance, and to aid them.” By November 1856,
Frederick Douglass was certain that the “peaceful annihilation” of
slavery was “almost hopeless” and therefore contended5 “that the
slave’s right to revolt is perfect, and only wants the occurrence of

favorable circumstances to become a duty We cannot but shudder

as we call to mind the horrors that have marked servile insurrections —
we would avert them if we could; but shall the millions for ever submit
to robbery, to murder, to ignorance, and every unnamed evil which an
irresponsible tyranny can devise, because the overthrow' of that tyranny
would be productive of horrors? Wc say not . . . terrible as it will be, we
accept and hope for it.”

And while John Brown’s work was the most spectacular, he was by
no means the only Northern man to agitate among the slaves them-
selves; there were others, the vast majority unnamed, but some arc
known, like Alexander Ross, James Redpath, and W. L. Chaplin.6 But
this exceedingly dangerous work was mainly done by Northern or
Canadian Negroes who had themselves escaped from slavery. A few of
these courageous people are known— Harriet T ubman, J osiah Henson,
William Still, Elijah Anderson, John Mason. It has been estimated7
that, from Canada alone, in 1860, 500 Negroes went into the South to
rescue their brothers. What people can offer a more splendid chapter to
the record of human fortitude?

The obvious is at times elusive and it is therefore necessary to bear in
mind when trying to discover the causes of slave disaffection that one is
indeed dealing with slaves. We will give but one piece of evidence to
indicate something of what is meant. In January 1854 the British consul
at Charleston, in a private letter, wrote, “The frightful atrocities of slave
holding must be seen to be described .... My next-door neighbor, a
lawyer of the first distinction, and a member of the Southern Aristocra-
cy, told me himself that he flogged all his own negroes, men and women,
when they misbehaved. ... It is literally no more to kill a slave than to
shoot a dog.”8

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

There is considerable evidence pointing to a quite general state of
insubordination and disaffection, apart from conspiracies and revolts,
among the slave population.

A lady of Burke County, North Carolina, complained in April 1850
of such a condition among her slaves and declared, “I have not a single
servant (slave) at my command.” Three years later a traveler in the
South observed “in the newspapers, complaints of growing insolence
and insubordination among the negroes.”9 References to the “common
practice with slaves” of harboring runaways recur, as do items of the
arrest of slaves caught in the act of learning to read. A paper of 1858
reported the arrest of ninety Negroes for that “crime.” It urged severe
punishment and remarked, “Scarcely a week passes, that instruments of
writing, prepared by negroes, are not taken from servants (slaves) in the
streets, by the police.”10

A Louisiana paper of 1858 reported “more cases of insubordination
among the negro population . . . than ever known before,” and a
Missouri paper of 1859 commented upon the “alarmingly frequent”
cases of slaves killing their owners. It added that “retribution seems to
be dealt out to the perpetrators with dispatch and in the form to which
only a people wrought up to the highest degree of indignation and
excitement would resort.”11

Examples of such retribution with their justification are enlighten-
ing. Olmsted tells of the burning of a slave near Knoxville, Tenn., for
the offense of killing his master and quotes the editor of a “liberal”
newspaper as justifying the lynching as a “means of absolute, necessary
self-defense.” The same community shortly found six legal executions
needed for the stability of its society.12 Similarly, a slave in August 1854
killed his master in Mt. Meigs, Alabama, and, according to the
Vigilance Committee, boasted of his deed. This slave, too, was burned
alive. “The gentlemen constituting the meeting were men of prudence,
deliberation and intelligence, and acted from an imperative sense of the
necessity of an example to check the growing and dangerous insubor-
dination of the slave population.” Precisely the same things happened13
in the same region in June 1856 and January 1857. Again, in August
1855 a patrolman in Louisiana killed a slave who did not stop when
hailed and this was considered14 proper since “Recent disorders among
the slaves in New Iberia had made it a matter of importance that the
laws relative to the police of slaves, should be strictly enforced.”

A common method by which American slaves showed their “do-

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

cility” was arson. This occurred with striking frequency during the ten
years under scrutiny. For example, from Nov. 26, 1850, to Jan. 15, 1851,
one New Orleans paper reported slave burnings of at least seven sugar
houses. For a similar period, Jan. 31, 1850, to May 30, 1851, there were
seven convictions of slaves in Virginia for arson.15

Burnings were at times concerted. Thus the Norfolk Beacon of Sept.
21, 1852, declared that the slaves of Princess Anne County, Va., had
excited alarm and that an extra patrol had been ordered out. And,

On Sunday night last, this patrol made a descent upon a church where a
large number of negroes had congregated for the purpose of holding a
meeting, and dispersed them. In a short time, the fodder stacks of one of the
party who lived near were discovered on fire. The patrol immediately started
for the fire, but before reaching the scene it was discovered that the stacks of
other neighbors had shared a like fate, all having no doubt been fired by the
negroes for revenge. A strict watch is now kept over them, and most rigid
means adopted to make every one know and keep his place.

The Federal Union of Milledgeville, Ga., of March 20, 1855, told of
incendiary fires set by slaves that month in South Carolina and three
counties of Georgia. Property damage was considerable and “many
persons were seriously injured.”16

The fleeing of slaves reached very great proportions from 1850 to
1860 and was a constant and considerable source of annoyance to the
slavocracy. According to the census estimates 1,011 slaves succeeded in
escaping in 1850 and 803 succeeded in 1860. At current prices that
represented a loss of about $1 ,000,000 each year. But that is a very small
part of the story. First, the census reports were poor. The census takers
were paid a certain sum for each entrant and so tended to make only
those calls that were least expensive to themselves. City figures were
therefore more reliable than those for rural communities. Moreover,
Olmsted found census taking in the South “more than ordinarily
unreliable” and told of a census taker there who announced that he
would be at a certain tavern at a certain day “for the purpose of
receiving from the people of the vicinity — who were requested to call
upon him— the information it was his duty to obtain!”17

According to Professor W. B. Hesseltine, “Between 1830 and 1860 as
many as 2,000 slaves a year passed into the land of the free along the
routes of the Underground Railroad,” and Professor Siebert has
declared18 that this railroad saw its greatest activity from 1850 to 1860.
And this is just a fraction of those who fled but did not succeed in
reaching a free land, who were captured or forced to turn back. When

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

eopie pay as high as $300 for one bloodhound19 the fleeing of slaves is a

carious problem indeed. .

It is also to be noted that the decade witnessed a qualitative as well as
nuantitative change in the fugitive slave problem, for now not only did
niore slaves flee, but more often than before they fled in groups; they, as

Southern papers put it, stampeded.20

Another piece of evidence of the growing unrest of the slave popula-
tion is afforded by the figures for money appropriated by the state ot
Virginia for slaves owned by her citizens who were legally executed or
banished from the state.21 For the fiscal year 1851-52 the sum equalled
S12 000- for 1852-53 the sum was $15,000; 1853-54, $19,000 was appro-
S and the same for 1854-55. For .he year 1855-56 $2 1,000 was
necessary and this was duplicated the next year. For 1857-58 the sum
was $35 000 and stayed at the same high level for 1858-59. For each of
the next’two years prior to the Civil War, 1859-60, and 1860-61, $30,000
was appropriated. Thus “bad” slaves, legally disposed of, cost the one
state of Virginia in ten years the sum of $239,000.

There was still another manifestation of slave disaffection: conspir-
acy or revolt. Some of the episodes already described, as that in Virginia
in 1852 or in Georgia in 1855, may perhaps be thought of as conspir-
acies. The decade witnessed many more, the most important of which

follow. , , , .

A free Negro, George Wright, of New Orleans, was asked by a slave

Albert, in June 1853 to join in a revolt.22 He declared his interest and
was brought to a white man, a teacher by the name of Dyson, who had
come to Louisiana in 1840 from Jamaica. Dyson trusted Wright,
declared that one hundred whites had agreed to aid the Negroes in their
bid for freedom, and urged Wright to join. Wright did— verbally. He
almost immediately betrayed the plot and led the police to the slave
Albert The slave at the time of arrest, J une 13, carried a knife, a sword,
a revolver, one bag of bullets, one pound of powder, two boxes o
percussion caps, and $86. The patrol was ordered out, the city guard
strengthened, and twenty slaves and Dyson were instantly arrested

Albert stated that 2,500 slaves were involved. He named none. In
prison he declared that “all his friends had gone down the coast and
were fighting like soldiers. If he had shed blood in the cause he would
not have minded the arrest.” It was indeed reported that “a large
number of negroes have fled from their masters and are now missing,
but no actual fighting was mentioned. Excitement was great along the
coast, however, and the arrest of one white man, a cattle driver.

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

occurred at Bonnet Clare. A fisherman, Michael McGill, testified that I
he had taken Dyson and two slaves carrying what he thought were arms I
to a swamp from which several Negroes emerged. The Negroes were
given the arms and disappeared.

The New Orleans papers tended to minimize the trouble, but did
declare that the city contained “malicious and fanatical” whites, “cut-
throats in the name of liberty— murderers in the guise of philanthropy”
and commended the swift action of the police, while calling for further I
precautions and restrictions. The last piece of information concerning I
this is an item telling of an attack by Albert upon the jailer in which he I
caused the blood to flow.” Thedisposition of the rebels is not reported. I

The year 1856 was one of extraordinary slave unrest. The first serious I
difficulty of the year was caused by maroons in North Carolina. A
letter2-1 of August 25, 1856, to Governor Thomas Bragg signed by I
Richard A. Lewis and twenty-one others informed him of a “very secure I
retreat for runaway negroes” in a large swamp between Bladen and !
Robeson Counties. There “for many years past, and at this time, there j
arc several runaways of bad and daring character— destructive to all I
kinds of Stock and dangerous to all persons living by or near said I
swamp.” Slaveholders attacked these maroons August 1, but accom-
plished nothing and saw one of their own number killed. “The negroes
ran oft cursing and swearing and telling them to come on, they were
ready tor them again.” The Wilmington Journal of August 14 men- ^
tioned that these Negroes “had cleared a place for a garden, had cows,
etc., in the swamp.” Mr. Lewis and his friends were “unable to offer
sufficient inducement for negro hunters to come with their dogs unless
aided from other sources.” The governor suggested that magistrates call
for the militia, but whether this was done or not is unknown.

A plot involving over 200 slaves and supposed to mature on Septem-
ber 6, 1856, was discovered24 in Colorado County, Texas, shortly before
that date. Many of the Mexican inhabitants of the region were declared
to be implicated. And it was felt “that the lower class of the Mexican
population are incendiaries in any country where slaves are held.” They
were arrested and ordered to leave the county within five days and never
to return “under the penalty of death.” A white person by the name of
William Mehrmann was similarly dealt with. Arms were discovered in
the possession of a few slaves. Every one of the 200 arrested was severely
whipped, two dying under the lash. Three were hanged. One slave
leader, Frank, was not captured.

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

Trouble involving some 300 slaves and a few white men, one of whom
as named James Hancock, was reported in October from two count-
• ouchita and Union, in Arkansas, and two parishes, Union and
Claiborne, across the border in Louisiana. The outcome here is not
known On November 7 “an extensive scheme of negro insurrection”
was discovered in Lavaca, De Witt and Victoria Counties in the
Southeastern part of Texas and very near Colorado County, seat of the
October conspiracy. A letter from Victoria of November 7 declared
that: “The negroes had killed off all the dogs in the neighborhood, and
were preparing for a general attack” when betrayal came. Whites were
implicated, one being “severely horsewhipped,” and the others driven
out of the county. What became of the slaves is not stated.25

One week later a conspiracy was disclosed in St. Mary parish,
Louisiana. It was believed26 that “favorite family servants” were the
leaders. Slaves throughout the parish were arrested. Three white men
and one free Negro were also held. The slaves were lashed and returned
to their masters, but the four others were imprisoned. The local paper of
November 22 declared that the free Negro “and at least one of the white
men, will suffer death for the part taken in the matter.”

And in the very beginning of November trouble was reported- from
Tennessee. A letter of November 2 told of the arrest of thirty slaves, and
a white man named Williams, in Fayette County, at the Southwestern
tip of the state. It was believed that the plot extended to “the surround-
ing counties and states.” Confirmation of this soon came. Within two
weeks unrest was reported from Montgomery County in the north
central part of the state, and across the border in the iron foundries of
Louisa, Kentucky. Again many slaves and one white man were ar-
rested. Shortly thereafter plots were discovered in Obion, at 1 en-
nessee’s western tip, and in Pulton, Kentucky, as well as in New Madrid
and Scott Counties, Missouri.

In December, plots were reported, occasionally outbreaks occurred,
and slaves and whites were arrested, tortured, banished and executed in
virtually every slave state. The discontent forced its way through,
notwithstanding clear evidences of censorship. Thus a Georgia paper
confessed that slave disaffection was a “delicate subject to touch” and
that it had “refrained from giving our readers any of the accounts of
contemplated insurrections.”28

The Washington correspondent of the New York Weekly Tribune
declared on December 20 that: “The insurrectionary movement in

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

Tennessee obtained more headway than is known to the public—
important facts being suppressed in order to check the spread of the
contagion and prevent the true condition of affairs from being under*
stood elsewhere.” Next week the same correspondent stated that he had

reliable information” of serious trouble in New Orleans leading to the
hanging of twenty slaves, ‘‘but the newspapers carefully refrain from
any mention of the facts.”

Indeed, the New Orleans Daily Picayune of December 9 had itself
admitted that it had “refrained from publishing a great deal which we
receive by the mails, going to show that there is a spirit of turbulence
abroad in various quarters.” December 23 it said the same thing about
“this very delicate subject” but did state that there were plots for
rebellion during the Christmas holidays “in Kentucky, Arkansas and
Tennessee, as well as in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas” and that
recent events “along the Cumberland river in Kentucky and Tennessee
and the more recent affairs in Mississippi, approach very nearly to
positive insurrection.”

To this may be added Maryland, Alabama, Virginia, North Car-
olina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.29 Features of the conspir-
acies are worth particular notice. Arms were discovered among the
slaves in, at least, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas. Preparations for
blowing up bridges were uncovered. Attacks upon iron mills in Ken-
tucky were started but defeated. At least three whites were killed by
slaves in that same state. The date for the execution of four slaves in
Dover, Tennessee, was pushed ahead for fear of an attempt at rescue,
and a body of 150 men was required to break up a group of about the
same number of slaves marching to Dover for that very purpose.

Free Negroes were directly implicated as well as slaves in Kentucky,
and they were driven out of several cities as Murfreesboro, Tenn.,
Paducah, Ky., and Montgomery, Ala. Whites, too, were often impli-
cated. Two were forced to flee from Charles County, Maryland. One,
named Taylor, was hanged in Dover, Tenn., and two others driven out.
One was hanged and another whipped in Cadiz, Ky. One was arrested
in Obion, Tenn. The Galveston, Texas, News of December 27 reported
the frustration of a plot in Houston County and stated, “Arms and
ammunition were discovered in several portions of the county, given to
them, no doubt, by white men, who are now living among us, and who
are constantly inciting our slaves to deeds of violence and bloodshed.”

A letter, passed along by whites as well as slaves, found December 24,

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

1856, on a slave employed on the Richmond and York Railroad in
Virginia is interesting from the standpoint of white cooperation and
indicates, too, a desire for something more than bare bodily freedom.
The letter reads:

My dear friend: You must certainly remember what I have told you— you
must'come up to the contract— as we have carried things thus far. Meet at
the place where we said, and don't make any disturbance until we meet and
don't let any white man know any-thing about it, unless he is trust-worthy.
The articles are all right and the country is ours certain. Bring all your
friends; tell them, that if they want freedom, to come. Don’t let it leak out; if
vou should get in any difficulty send me word immediately to afford
protection. Meet at the crossing and prepare for Sunday night for the
neighborhood—

“P.S. Don’t let anybody see this—

Freedom— Freeland
Your old friend
W.B.30

Another interesting feature of the plots of November and December
1856 is the evidence of the effect of the bitter presidential contest of that
year between the Republican, Fremont, and the Democrat, Buchanan.
The slaves were certain that the Republican Party stood for their
liberation and some felt that Colonel Fremont would aid them, forci-
bly, in their efforts for freedom. “Certain slaves are so greatly imbued
with this fable that I have seen them smile when they were being
whipped, and have heard them say that, ‘Fremont and his men can hear
the blows they receive.’” One unnamed martyr, a slave iron worker in
Tennessee, “said that he knew all about the plot, but would die before
he would tell. He therefore received 750 lashes, from which he died.”31

Of the John Brown raid nothing may be said that has not already
been told, except that to draw the lesson from the attempt s failure that
the slaves were docile, as has so often been done, is absurd. And it
would be absurd even if we did not have a record of the bitter struggle of
the Negro people against slavery. This is so for two main reasons; first.
Brown’s raid was made in the northwestern part of Virginia, where
slavery was of a domestic, household nature and where slaves were
relatively few; secondly, Brown gave the slaves absolutely no fore-
knowledge of his attempt. The slaves had no way of judging Brown s
chances or even his sincerity, and, in that connection, let it be remem-
bered that slave stealing was a common crime in the Old South.

The event aroused tremendous excitement. The immediate result is
Well described in this paragraph:

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

A most terrible panic, in the meantime, seizes not only the village, the
vicinity, and all parts of the state, but every slave state in the Union. . .
Rumours of insurrections, apprehensions of invasions, whether well-found-
ed or ill-founded, alters not the proof of the inherent and incurable w eakness
and insecurity of society, organized upon a slave-holding basis.32

Many of these rumors were undoubtedly false or exaggerated both
by terror and by anti-“Black Republican” politicians. Bearing this in
mind, however, there yet remains good evidence of real and widespread
disaffection among the slaves.

Late in November 1859 there were several incendiary fires in the
neighborhood of Berryville, Virginia. Two slaves, Jerry and Joe, of Col.
Francis McCormick were arrested on the charge of conspiracy and
convicted. An effort was made to save these slaves from hanging for it
was felt that the evidence against them was not conclusive and that since
“We of the South, have boasted that our slaves took no part in the raid
upon Virginia, and did not sympathize with Brown,”33 it would look
bad to hang two slaves now for the same crime. Others, however, urged
their executions as justified on the evidence and necessary as an
example, for “there are other negroes who disserve just as much
punishment.” The slaves’ sentences were commuted to imprisonment,
at hard labor, for life.

In December Negroes in Bolivar, Missouri, revolted and attacked
their enslavers w'ith sticks and stones. A few whites were injured and at
least one slave was killed. Later,

A mounted company was ranging the woods in search of negroes. The
owner of some rebellious slaves was badly wounded, and only saved himself
by flight. Several blacks have been severely punished. The greatest excite-
ment prevailed, and every man was armed and prepared for a more serious
attack.34

Still later advices declared that “the excitement had somewhat
subsided.”

Early in July I860 fires swept over and devastated many cities in
Northern Texas. Slaves were suspected and arrested.35 White men were
invariably reported as being implicated, and frequent notices of their
beatings and executions together with slaves occur. Listing of the
counties in which plots were reported, cities burned, and rebels ex-
ecuted will give one an idea of the extensiveness of the trouble and help
explain the abject terror it aroused: Anderson, Austin, Dallas, Denton,
Ellis, Grimes, Hempstead, Lamar, Milam, Montgomery, Rusk, Tar-
rant, Walker and Wood. The reign of terror lasted for about eight
weeks.

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860 59

a nd before it was over reports of disaffection came from other areas,
m August a conspiracy among the slaves, again with white accomplices
aid to have been inspired by a nearby maroon band, was uncovered
S3d crushed in Talladega County, Ala.36 About 100 miles south of this,
in Pine Level, Montgomery County, of the same state, in that same
month the arrest of a white man, a harness maker was repotted for
Sg improper conversations with slaves.”* Wrthm fwe months

serious difficulty is reported from that region.

Meanwhile, still in August, plots were uncovered in Whitfield, Cobb,
and Floyd Counties in Northwest Georgia. Said the Columbus Ga.,
Sun of Aug. 29: ‘‘By a private letter from Upper Georgia, we learnt th
an insurrectionary plot has been discovered among the negroes in the
vicinity of Dalton and Marietta and great excitement was occasioned
bv it and still prevails.” The slaves had intended to burn Dalton,
capture a train and crash on into Marietta some seventy miles away.
Thirty-six of the slave leaders were imprisoned and the entire area took
on a warlike aspect. Again it was felt that “white men instigated the
plot ” but since Negro testimony was not acceptable against a white
man the evince against them was felt to be insufficient for convic-
tion. Another Georgia paper of the same month, the Augusta ,a ilch.

admitting “we dislike to allude to the evidences of the insurrectionary
tendency of things ...” nevertheless did deign barely to ment.or .the
recent discovery of a plot among the slaves of Floyd County, about

forty miles northwest of Marietta. fv

In September a slave girl betrayed a conspiracy in Winston County,
Mississippi. Approximately thirty-five slaves were arrested and yet
again it was discovered that whites were involved.’8 At least one slave
was hanged as well as one white man described as a photographer

named G. Harrington. „ t. _

Late in October a plot first formed in July was disclosed among
slaves of Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties, Virginia and Cur ntuc
County, North Carolina.39 Jack and Denson, slaves of a Mr. David
Corprew of Princess Anne, w-ere among the leaders. Others were named
Leicester, Daniel, Andrew, Jonas and William. These ^en planned to
start the fight for freedom with their spades and axes and grubbing
hoes. And it was understood, according to a slave witness, that whi e
folks were to come in there to help us,” but in no way could the slaves be
influenced to name their white allies. Banishment, that is, sale and
transportation out of the state, was the leaders’ punishment.

In November plots were disclosed in Crawford and Habersham

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

Counties, Georgia.40 In both places whites were involved. In Crawford I
a white man, described as a Northern tinsmith, was executed, while a I
white implicated in Habersham was given five hours to leave How I
many slaves were involved is not clear. No executions among them were ■
reported. According to the Southern papers the rebels were merelv I
4 severely whipped.” y

December finds the trouble back again in the heart of Alabama in
Pine Level, Autaugaville, Prattville and Hayneville. A resident of the '
region declared it involved41 “many hundred negroes” and that “the
instigators of the insurrection were found to be the low-down, or poor
whites of the country.” It was discovered that the plot called for the
redistribution of the “land, mules, and money.” Said another source
the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser of December 13:

We have found out a deep laid plan among the negroes of our neishbor-
,.°°ir;antd from ^31 we can find out from our negroes, it is general all over
he country . We hear some startling facts. They have gone far enough in
the plot to divide our estates, mules, lands, and household furniture.

The crop of martyrs in this particular plot numbered at least twenty-
five Negroes and four whites. The names of but two of the whites are !
known, Rollo and Williamson.

There is evidence of the existence in December 1860 of a widespread
secret organization of slaves in South Carolina, dedicated to the
objective of freedom. Said J. R. Gilmore, a visitor in the region:

a therC TStS amo"g the bIacks a secret and wide-spread organization of
or^p!° f'f cJiaract?r’ hav,nS ds grip, password, and oath. It has various
fs FREEDOM^ Wh° ^ COmpetent and earnest men and its ultimate object

Gilmore warned a slave leader, Scipio, that such an organization
meant mischief. No, said Scipio, “it meant only RIGHT and JUS-
TICE.”

Scipio’s parting words were a plea that Gilmore let the North know
that the slaves were panting for freedom and that the poor whites, too,
were victims of the same vicious system.

* * *

In 1860 there were over 8 million white people in the slaveholding
states. Of these but 384,000 were slaveholders among whom were
77,000 owning but one Negro. Less than 200,000 whites throughout the
South owned as many as 10 slaves— a minimum necessity for a planta-

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

• n And it is to be noted that, while, in 1850 one out of every three
[l°hites was connected, directly or indirectly, with slaveholding, in I860

* iy 0ne out of every four had any direct or indirect connection with
°laveholding. Moreover, in certain areas, particularly Delaware, Ken-
tucky, Maryland, Missouri and Virginia, the proportion of slaves to the
total population noticeably fell.43

These facts are at the root of the maturing class conflict— slave-
holder versus non-slaveholder — which was the outstanding internal
political factor in the South in the decade prior to secession. It is, of
course, true generally that, “ . . . the real central theme of Southern
history seems to have been the maintenance of the planter class in
control.”44 But never did that class face greater danger than in the
decade preceding the Civil War.

Let us briefly examine the challenges to Bourbon rule in a few
Southern states.

In Virginia, at the insistence of the generally free-labor, non-planta-
tion West united with artisans and mechanics of Eastern cities, a
constitutional convention was held in 1850-51. 45 On two great questions
the Bourbons lost; representation was considerably equalized by the
overwhelming vote of 75,748 to 1 1,063, and the suffrage was extended to
include all free white males above twenty-one years of age. The history
of Virginia for the next eight years revolves around an ever-sharpening
struggle between the slaveholders and non-slaveholders. The power of
the latter was illustrated in the election of Letcher over Goggin in 1859
as governor. In that campaign slavocratic rule was the issue and the
Eastern, slaveholders’ papers appreciated the meaning of Letcher’s
victory. Thus, for example, the Richmond Whig of June 7, 1859,
declared:

Letcher owes his election to the tremendous majority he received in the

Northwest Free Soil counties, and in these counties to his anti-slavery

record.

In North Carolina, too, there was an “evident tendency of the non-
slaveholding West to unite with the non-slaveholding classes of the
East,”46 and this unifying tendency brought important victories. In
1850, for the first time in fifteen years, a Democratic candidate, David
S. Reid, captured the governorship, and he won because he urged
universal manhood suffrage in elections to the state’s senate (ownership
of fifty acres of land was then required in order to vote fora senator) as
well as to the lower house. Slaveholders’ opposition prevented the

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

enactment of such a law for several years but the people never wearied
in their efforts and, finally, free suffrage was ratified,47 August 1857 hv a
vote of 50,007 to 19,379. ya

A valiant struggle was also carried on for a more equitable tax
system— ad valorem taxation— in North Carolina.4* A few figures will
illustrate the situation. Slaves, from the ages of 12 to 50 only, were taxed
5% cents per hundred dollars of their value. But land was taxed 20 cents
per hundred dollars, and workers’ tools and implements were taxed one
dollar per hundred dollars value. Thus, in 1850, slave property worth
$203,000,000 paid but $118,330 tax, while land worth $98,000,000 paid
over $190,000 in taxes. A Raleigh worker asked in 1860: “Is it no
grievance to tax the wages of the laboring man, and not tax the income
of their (sic) employer?”

The leader in the fight for equalized taxation was Moses A. Bledsoe
a state senator from Wake County. In 1858 he united with the recently
formed Raleigh Workingmen’s Association to fight this issue through.
He was promptly read out of the Democratic Party, but, in 1860 ran as
an independent and was elected. The issue split the Democratic Party in
North Carolina and seriously threatened the political strength of the
slavocracy. Professor W. K. Boyd has remarked, “one cannot but see in
the ad valorem campaign the beginning of a revolt against slavery as a
political and economic influence. . . . ”49

Similar struggles occurred in Texas, Louisiana and South Car-
olina.50 In the latter state, for example, the bitter congressional cam-
paign of October 1851 in which secessionists were beaten, again by a
united front of farmers and urban workers, by a vote of 25,045 to 17,710,
was “marked by denunciations hurled by freemen of the back country
against the barons of the low country.” The next year a National
Democratic Party was launched, led by men like J. L. Orr (later
Speaker of the National House), B. F. Perry, and J. J. Evans.5' Their
program cut at the heart of the slavocracy. Let South Carolina abandon
its isolationism, let it permit the popular election of the president and
governor (both selected by the state legislature), let it end property
qualifications for members of its legislature, let it equalize the vicious
system of apportionment (which made the slaveholding East domi-
nant), let it establish colleges in the Western part of the state (as it had in
the Eastern), and let it provide ample free schools. And, finally, let it
enter upon a program of diversified industry. None of these reforms
was carried, except partial advance along educational lines, but the
threat was considerable and unmistakable.5*

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

Overt anti-slavery sentiment was not lacking in the South. This
ounts for the fact that, especially in the fifties, scores of white people
3 re driven out of the slaveholding area because of such sentiment in
what approached a reign of terror. Another evidence of this has been
presented in the material showing that whites were often implicated
with slaves in their conspiracies or other efforts at freedom.

The New Orleans Courier of October 25, 1850, devoted an editorial to
castigating native anti-slavery men, who, it declared, were numerous.
Some even thought that two-thirds of the people of New Orleans would
be willing to vote for emancipation. An anonymous letter writer said
that this was so because there were so many workers in the city who
owned no slaves. Earlier that same year a leading Democratic paper of
Mississippi, the Free Trader, had declared that “the evil, the wrong of
slavery, is admitted by every enlightened man in the Union.”53 Pro-
fessor A. C. Cole has also noted “certain indications which point to a
hostility on the part of some of the non-slaveholding Democrats
outside of the black belt to the institution of slavery itself.”54

Competent contemporary witnesses testify to such a feeling, and it
certainly was very widespread in Western Kentucky, Eastern Ten-
nessee, Western North Carolina, Western Virginia, and Maryland,
Delaware and Missouri.55

In order to evaluate properly the effect of the misbehavior of the
exploited, Negro and white, upon the mind ol the slavocracy, it is
instructive to investigate its ideology. Formally, the Democratic Party
was derived from Jefferson, but by the 1820s the crux of that democrat’s
philosophy, i.e., man’s right and competence to govern himself, was
being scrapped in the South, for one of an authoritarian nature; there
has always been slavery, there will always be slavery, and there should
always be slavery. And, said the slavocrats, our form of slavery is
especially delightful for two reasons: First, our slaves are Negroes, and
while slavery is good in itself, the fact that we enslave an inferior
people makes our slavery particularly good; and, secondly, since ours is
not a wage slavery, but chattel slavery, we have no class problem.

Thus Bishop Elliot would declare at Savannah, February 23, 1862,
that following the American Revolution,

... we declared war against all authority. . . . The reason oi man was
exalted to an impious degree and in the face not only of experience, but ot
the revealed word of God, all men were declared equal and man was

pronounced capable of self-government 1 wo greater falsehoods could

not have been announced, because the one struck at the whole constitution

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

of civil society as it had ever existed, and because the other denied th
fall and corruption of man.56 ne 1

And thus, too, a Georgia paper, the Muskogee Herald, of 1856, mieh,
exclaim: m

Free society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of
fheorists?5^311108, ** lhy operatlves’ small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck

Again, slaveholders openly bragged— as in an editorial appearing in
the New Orleans Crescent, October 27, 1859, that the “dragon of
democracy, the productive laboring element, having its teeth drawn Tisl
robbed of its ability to do harm in a state of bondage.”

But here were the mechanics and artisans and farmers, Negro and
white, of the South, doggedly agitating and conspiring and dying for
the same “moon-struck” ideas— liberty and progress! What to do9
There were two ideas as concerns the Negro: reform slavery5** (legal-
ize marriage, forbid separation of families, allow education); and
further repression. The latter, repression, won with hardly a struggle.

The Bourbons were, too, keenly aware of the dangerous trend among
the non-slaveholding whites. Propaganda flooded the South to the
effect that the interests of slaveholders and non-slaveholders were really
the same. Said the press, ”... arraying the non-slaveholder against the

slaveholder ... is all wrong The fact that one man owns slaves does

not in the least injure the man who owns none.”59
Slavocracy’s leading publicist, J. D. B. DeBow, issued a pamphlet on

'f' m Slavery °f the Southern Non-Slaveholder (Charleston,
1860), and the politicians played the Bourbons’ trump card: the non-
slaveholders “may have no pecuniary interest in slavery, but they have a
social interest at stake that is worth more to them than all the wealth of
the Indies.”60

But asked the Bourbons and their apologists, why then does it so
often happen that whites aid slaves in their plots? Why, they asked, do
some agitate against slavery and distribute “vicious works” like that by

!?°r ^rholijla’s‘‘renegad^on,M Hinton R. Helper’s Impending Crisis
(1857)? Why do they struggle for political and economic reforms similar
to those of Northern “moon-struck” theorists?

Merchants and capitalists, even Northern merchants and capitalists
are sympathetic, they reasoned, “but the mechanics, most of them are
pests to society, dangerous among the slave population, and ever ready

CLASS CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH: 1850-1860

form combinations against the interest of the slaveholder, against the
vs of the country, and against the peace of the Commonwealth.
And “slaves are constantly associating with low white people, who are
not slave owners. Such people are dangerous to a community, and

chould be made to leave our city.”62 , , . .

A visitor to Georgia, in December 1859, felt that "the slaveho der
,eems to watch more carefully to keep the poor white man in subjection
rtan he does to guard the slaves.”" The North Carolinian Calvin Wiley
warned in 1860

. that there was as much danger from the prejudice existing between the
rich and poor as between master and slave [and felt that] all aUemP s •
widen the breach between classes of citizens are just as dangerous as ettor .

to excite slaves to insurrection.

In 1850 a South Carolinian, J. H. Taylor, had written that.

. . the great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that
they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some ot the sympathy
which falls upon the suffering. . . At is this great upheaving of our masses
have to fear, so far as our institutions are concerned.

And in February 1861 another South Carolinian, observing the
growth of a white laboring class and its opposition to the slavocratic
philosophy declared:

It is to be feared that even in this State, the purest in its slave condition
democracy may gain a foothold, and that here also the contest for existence

may be waged between them.M'

One month later, March 27, 1861, the Raleigh, N.C., Regisier. ob-
serving the increasing class bitterness in its own state, actually express-

ed a fear of civil war within the state. 6

What then, is the situation? The national supremacy of the
slavocracy is gone. And its local power is threatened by both its
victims— the slaves and the non-slaveholding whites— separately and,
with alarming frequency, jointly. South Carolina Senator James Ham-
mond had warned, in 1847, that slavery’s “only hope was to keep the

actual slaveholders not only predominant, but paramount within i s

This “only hope” appeared to be slipping away, if it were not already
gone, by 1860. Desperation replaced hope, and desperation the con-
viction that there was everything to gain and nothing to lose— led to the
slaveholders’ rebellion.

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

And it was their rebellion. As one of them, a South Carolinian A P
Aldrich, wrote November 25, I860:

I do not believe the common people understand it; but whoever waited f0
the common people when a great movement was to be made? We must ma/
the move and force them to follow. That is the way of all great revolution!
and all great achievements.69

One month later a wealthy North Carolinian, Kenneth Rayner
confided to JudgeThomas Ruflin that he“was mortified to find . . . that
the people who did not own slaves were swearing that they would not
lift a finger to protect rich men’s negroes. Y ou may depend on it . . . that
this feeling prevails to an extent, you do not imagine.”70

Just a few days before the start of actual warfare Virginia’s arch-
secessionist, Edmund Ruffin, admitted to his diary, April 2, 1861, that it
was

... communicated privately by members of each delegation (to the
Confederate Constitutional Convention) that it was supposed people of
CVe,r>uSta!e fxcept S- Ca- was indisposed to the disruption of the Union—
and that it the question of reconstruction of the former Union was referred
to the popular vote, that there was probability of its being approved.71

The Raleigh, N. C., Standard, whose editor, W. W. Holden, had been
read out of the Democratic Party because of his non-slaveholding
proclivities, saw very clearly the result of a rebellion whose base was
merely several thousand distraught slaveholders. Its editorial of Febru-
ary 5, 1861, warned that

the Negroes will know, too, that the war is waged on their account. They
will become restless and turbulent. . . . Strong governments will be estab-
lished and bear heavily on the masses. The masses will at length rise up and
destroy everything in their way. . . .

I his article has attempted to present a new emphasis upon a factor
hitherto insufficiently appreciated in appraising the causes that drove
the slaveholding class to desperation and counter-revolution in 1861.
This desperation was not merely due to the growing might of a free-
labor industrial bourgeoisie, combined, via investments and transpor-
tation ties, with the free West, and to that group’s capture of national
power in 1860. Another important factor, becoming more and more
potent as the slavocracy was being weakened by capitalism in the
North, was the sharpening class struggle within the South itself from
1850 to 1860. This struggle manifested itself in serious slave disaffection,
in frequent cooperation between poor whites and Negro slaves, and in

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN'S EXECUTION

the rapid maturing of the political consciousness of the non-slavehold-

ingAnd' taking another step, he who seeks to understand the reasons for
,he ultimate collapse of the Confederacy will find them not only in the
military might of the North, but, in an essential respect, in the highly
unpopular character of that government. The Southern masses op-
posed the Bourbon regime and it was this opposition, of the poor whites
and of the Negro slaves, that contributed largely to its downfall.

Published in The Communist, XVlll, February & March 1939. Reprinted
in Herbert Apthekcr, Toward Negro Freedom (New York: New Century
Publishers, 1956), pp 44-67.

On the Centenary of John Brown’s Execution

1 remember vividly the late Dr. Carter G. Woodson, great pioneer in
Negro historiography, telling me that his Harvard history teacher
Professor Edward Channing, admitted he could never think ol Old
John Brown without an urge to do the man violence, so intense was his
hatred for the martyr.

Generally speaking, the hatred among the Learned Ones and the
academicians persists; indeed, in the era of the Cold War it has
intensified. There are, certainly, some exceptions, and these, being as
rare as they are precious, deserve specific notation: Allan Keller, an
instructor in journalism at Columbia University, has produced a
sympathetic and stirring re-telling of the epic in his Thunder at Harpers
Ferrv (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1959), the value of which
is enhanced by the splendid reproduction of 32 rare, contemporary
illustrations; Oscar Sherwin, a professor of English at Clty College in
New York, in his excellent biography of the great Wendell Phillips,
devotes a rich chapter to the Brown drama ( Prophet of Liberty,

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

Bookman Associates, N. Y., 1959). Of the greatest value is A J0hn
Brown Reader, edited, with introduction and commentary by Louis
Ruchames ( Abelard-Schuman, London & N. Y., 1960). In the introduc-
tion, Dr. Ruchames refutes the anti-Brown mythology brewed by
James C. Malin and in part poured out again by Professors C. Vann
Woodward and Allan Nevins. The body of the book itself consists of
articles, letters, memoirs and estimates by and of John Brown— many
of these items published here for the first time — which add up to a
splendid memorial volume worthy of the great figure here delineated.
Still, it is to be noted that these men are not members of history
faculties; those sacred precincts remain clear, so far as the published
record will show, of any maverick straying from the Channing tradition
on John Brown.

Confining ourselves to the past twenty-five years— the present gener-
ation— one may offer three representative examples of the conven-
tional treatment of John Brown: Professor Arthur C. Cole, in his The
Irrepressible Conflict, which was the Civil War volume in the “stand-
ard” History of American Life edited by A. M. Schlesinger and D. R.
Fox— published by Macmillan in 1934— had four words for John
Brown: “fanatical abolitionist” and “mad purpose.” Professor David
Donald, then of Columbia University — now of Princeton— writing in
1948, spared a few more words: “crazy John Brown with a handful of
crack-brained disciples” {Lincoln’s Herndon, Knopf, N. Y.). Professor
Michael Kraus, of New York’s City College, in a work published in
November 1959, characterizes Brown as “fanatical and bordering on
the insane” (The United States to 1865, a volume in the University of
Michigan History of the Modern World, edited by Allan Nevins and H.
M. Ehrmann, Ann Arbor).

Officials and “leading citizens” of the present town of Harper’s Ferry,
finding it impossible to give up the chance that the centenary of Brown’s
attack offered to attract a few additional dollars from tourists, did
establish a Harper’s Ferry Centennial Association. This Association,
according to the New York Times (October 4, 1959) set aside four days
of events “to commemorate (not ‘celebrate,’ as one of the officials noted
with emphasis) John Brown’s raid.” The Times reporter explained the
nice care shown in the choice of verbs, by quoting one of the officials:
“John Brown’s Raid was embarrassing and untimely when it occurred
in 1859, and it apparently still is, today.”

One of the featured commemorative events might well have added to

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN’S EXECUTION

_nse of embarrassment. The Times reported (Oct. 17 1959) that “a
tHe * i of uncoached ( ') experts" discussed John Brown. The uncoached
p3"s included a former editor of the American Legion magazine three
° hers of the history section of the National Park Service and J . C.
f !!as author of the just-published Road to Harper’s Ferry (Sloane
p urn . ’ N Y 1959) The big debate at this discussion revolved

C d quesiion of whetlJ or no. John Brown was “legally
tne Mr Furnas' presence, as well as the auspices, assured that no
of celebration would enter this centennial commemoration of
Brown’s effort; his book is so bitter a distillation of the word said and
drought of Brown and the Abolitionist movement that even the Times
and Herald-Tribune reviewers, while praising the book, of course, soli
felt imputed to enter a slight reservation in terms of Furnas' excessive

Tven such villains, one can guess who are the heroes; T^yWho

Took Their Stand: The Founders of the Confederacy (p“‘na"1' .

1959) as a new book by Manly W. Welman is called. (There is one
noteworthy thing about this book; it .manages To .display 1 conremp it«^
for John Brown's bravery. For this, one had to hitathis

published in the U ni.ed States in 1959— the author ,ha at his

execution John Brown manifested "animal courage. ) Outstanding, o!
course, in this galaxy of true nobility are J efferson Davis and I *

Lee Hudson Strode, a well-known novelist, is engaged in producing a
three-volume biography of the former. In 1954 hegaveus^on
Davis' American Patriot: in 1959 he brought forth Jefferson Daus.

Confederate President (Harcourt, Brace N. Y;); 3 ^ We
called Jefferson Davis: Freedom Fighter-ts yet promised us We
suggest tta latter as an appropriate finale, since in ‘hesecond volume
Mr Strode’s central thesis is that Jefferson Davis 'was conunualy
struck by the bitter irony of the North’s determination o suppress^
proud people, to deny the Southern states their right *eed°™
according to constitutional pledge." As the reader will observe, Mr.

Strode recognizes the ironical when he sees it

Robert E Lee, of course, already is apotheosized, his portrait

adornmg our President’s study and one of our ™;s postage
stamps-for all the world like a genuine freedom fighter The tolly

exalted character of General Lee showed itse f,‘" slavery

Virginia gentleman, if there ever was one— still felt that chattel . <7

was not quite right. And he was so troubled by his doubts that he wrote

PRF.I.UDE TO CIVIL WAR

his wife a letter about it in 1856 admitting that the institution had it I
dubious features, but noting that for its elimination one had to wait I
upon the will of God, which was notoriously slow to manifest itself I
Indeed, said Lee, to God two thousand years was but a passing day; thic I
the Abolitionists did not understand. The Abolitionists’ impatience was I
contrary to God’s way, Lee was sure, and therefore their efforts were I
dastardly. “Still I fear,” continued Lee to his wife, “they will persevere
in their evil course. Is it not strange that the descendants of those I
pilgrim fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom I
of opinion, have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual
liberty of others?”

The one who penned these words— who could easily wait while
others endured two thousand years of slavery, who saw indubitable evil
in those who sought a swifter pace, who took up arms to lead an assault
upon his country’s flag in order to sever the unity of the Republic (no '
two thousand years for that), and who could see “spiritual liberty” at |
stake in noninterference with slaveowners— the one who wrote these I
words is a hero of the Republic whose “moderation” confirms his
sanity!

The decisive and the particular feature about John Brown was that
he, a white American living in the pre-Civil War era, actually believed,
as he often said, that the Negro was the equal of the white and that all
men were brothers. John Brown, more than any other pre-twentieth
century American white man of record, burned out of himself any sense
of white superiority. He, therefore, sought out Negro people, lived
among them, listened to them, learned from them — Frederick Doug-
lass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Delany, J. M. Loguen, Dr. and Mrs. J. '
M. Gloucester, Henry H. Garnet, William Still, Harry Watson, and
many more, as well as those who, at Harper’s Ferry, pledged their lives
to his leadership. Negroes sensed at once, that here was a white man in
whom there was no condescension but a real comradeship; they, the
most oppressed, and therefore the most sensitive to the needs of justice
and the first to recognize sham, loved John Brown as though he were
father and brother. It is not possible for an American to earn a greater
tribute.

Since John Brown did achieve identification with the Negro people,
he felt their enslavement as though it were his own. He dedicated his
life, therefore, to contribute to its eradication: “I have only a short time
to live— only one death to die,” he wrote in 1856. “I will die fighting for
this cause.”

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN’S EXECUTION

The first historian, so far as I know, to see and to emphasize this
ling of real brotherhood that Brown achieved, is W. E. B. Du Bois,
ho wrote, in his splendid interpretive volume, John Brown (Phila-
delphia, 1909): “John Brown worked not simply for the Black Man— he
worked with them; and he was a companion of their daily life, knew
their faults and virtues, and felt, as few white Americans have felt, the
bitter tragedy of their lot.”

It is this identification which explains the special hatred felt for
Brown among most American academicians and the insistence that the
man was mad. In a society where chattel slavery is of fundamental
consequence and where its main rationale is the alleged inferiority, if
not inhumanity, of the slaves, to strive actively and militantly for the
uprooting of that institution and, in doing that, to insist that the
institution’s rationale is a fraud, naturally provokes the undying hatred
of those dominating the institution. Furthermore, the masters of ajim-
crow society, having come to terms with the conquered slaveowners
and made important assistants out of their lineal descendants, will
gladly honor the myths of those assistants and will eagerly incorporate
and refine the racist ideology of slavery into the chauvinist ideology ol
imperialism. Hence, though with some ambiguity and some embarrass-
ment, especially as the “Negro question” takes on a more and more
“delicate” character, these masters of jim-crow will honor those the
assistants worship and will loathe those the assistants despise.

This is all the more logical in that the Abolitionist assault upon the
institution of slavery carried with it— especially amongst the most
militant wing of that assault — a questioning of the entire institution oi
the private ownership of the means of production. Hence the insistence
of the most acute of the ideologists of slavery— George Fitzhugh and
John C. Calhoun, as examples— that there was no solution to the
contradiction involved in class division and no salvation for the rich in
the face of the therefore inexorably developing class struggle other than
the institution of chattel slavery. Where the workers were so much
capital in the pockets of the owners, there and only there was the class
struggle exorcised— unless, warned these ideologists, the struggle was
to be exorcised through the elimination of the right of ownership;
hence, it was urged, all property owners should unite in opposition to
the fundamentally seditious tenets of the Abolitionists. This did not
occur because there was fundamental antagonism between differing
classes of property owners, and because one, the slaveowners, domi-

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

nated state power and used this to advance their own interests and the
others, industrialists, certain merchants, farmers, sought this state
power in order to advance their own interests. But when the former was
undone, the basis for compromise was already present in the fact that
those who emerged victorious were committed to the private ownership
of the means of production and would unite with former enemies— or
with the devil— if such unity served that fundamental end.

John Brown, having been overpowered by the assault of United
States Marines, commanded by Robert E. Lee, with two of his sons I
dead about him, and with his head bloody from repeated blows with a 1
saber and his body pierced by several bayonet thrusts, was almost at
once subjected to an intense grilling by assembled dignitaries and
newspapermen. To the baiting and prodding of a reporter from the
feverishly pro-slavery New York Herald, John Brown said: “You may
dispose of me very easily; I am nearly disposed of now; but this question
is still to be settled — this Negro question I mean — the end of that is not i
yet.”

And when, under these circumstances, an official demanded to know
“Upon what principle do you justify your acts?” Brown replied:

Upon the golden rule, I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help
them; that is why 1 am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge,
or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and wronged, that
are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God.

With greater development he had made this same point in a long
conversation in 1856 with William A. Phillips, covering the Kansas
“troubles” for the New York Tribune. Phillips recorded:

One of the most interesting things in his conversation that night, and one
that marked him as a theorist, was his treatment of our forms of social and
political life. He thought society ought to be reorganized on a less selfish
basis; for while material interests gained something by the deification of
pure selfishness, men and women lost much by it. He said that all great
reforms, like the Christian religion, were based on broad, generous, self-
sacrificing principles. He condemned the sale of land as a chattel, and
thought there was an infinite number of wrongs to right before society would
be what it should be, but that in our country slavery was the “sum of all
villanies,” and its abolition the first essential work. If the American people
did not take courage and end it speedily, human freedom and republican
liberty would soon be empty names in these United States.

Brown’s sense of class was ever with him and he kept recurring to it.
From his prison cell, he wrote a friend on November 1, 1859: “I do not

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN S EXECUTION

, conscious of guilt in taking up arms; and had ,t been m behalf of the
feSf nd the powerful, the intelligent, the great-as men count great-
ri lof those who form enactments to suit themselves and corrupt
"fers, or some of their friends, that 1 interfered, suffered, sacnf.ced,

0 ri fell it would have been doing very well.

in the second volume of his History, published in 907, omits tries
S3 ^chae> Ktaus. in the book already e.ted, published m

1959, does the same.) They were, in their entire y, a

1 have another objection,

such a penalty. Had 1 interfered in admire the truthfulness and

admit has been fairly proved- Zt have testified in this

candor of the greater portion 0 powerful, the intelligent,

SHSiSsis

ma"S fwou'd SSt an ac, w orthy of reward rather than

punishment. the validity of the law of

This Court acknowledges, too, as 1 iUPP ’ Bible or;t least the New
God. 1 see a book kissed, which 1 suppose : to be the °rat ^

Testament, which teaches me that all tt Tel/hes me further, to
should do to me, 1 should do even so them. t0 act

remember them that are in bonds a^ understand that God is any

up to that instruction. 1 say l amyettoo y ? , , as , have done, as 1

respector of persons. I believe t a :nhehalfof His despised poor, 1 did

have always freely admitted .1 have o , h ^ sh0ukl forfeit my

no wrong, but right. Now if **£%**£ my blood further

whh^he^blood^ofmy children and will, .he blood of millions in this slave

74 PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

country whose rights arc disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enact-

ments, I say, let it be done. . . .

It was deemed proper that he so suffer; the Judge, speaking in the
name of the State of Virginia, sentenced John Brown to hang by the
neck until dead on December 2, 1859, one month after these immortal
words were uttered.

John Brown used to the full the six weeks of life left to him from the
date of his capture at the Armory until he mounted the scaffold in
Charlestown; particularly did he use the month given him from the date
of sentence to that of execution. As in the trial he had rejected with
scorn and bitterness efforts by court-appointed attorneys to plead
insanity for him, so, after being sentenced, he rejected proposals for his
rescue coming from Abolitionist friends. The important thing, he had
always said, was not to live long, but to live well; now, he added, he was
worth infinitely more to the cause of human emancipation at the end of
a hangman’s noose than he would be as a hunted fugitive.

He conducted himself with such courage and restraint, such consid-
eration and honor that he all but converted his warden to Abolitionism;
and that personage together with his guards wept on the day the Old
Man was led away to die. Meanwhile, in his interviews and in his steady
stream of letters he attacked slavery as an impermissible moral evil and
as an institution whose corrosive effect was threatening the existence of
the Republic. The reports of these interviews and the texts of these
letters were published in the New York Tribune, then the newspaper
with the largest circulation in the country, and in many other papers
and magazines and pamphlets. Public meetings— pro- and anti-
Brown— were held in every city and hamlet in the land; what the man
said and believed were matters of discussion in every household in the
United States. It is probably true that never in the history of the United
States had one man’s actions and concepts become for so prolonged a
period a matter of such intense interest among so vast a proportion of
the people as in the case of John Brown.

This is of decisive importance when considering the oft-repeated
allegation that the man had “thrown his life away” and that he died as
“absurdly” as he had lived. The contrary is the truth. In the life and in
the death of John Brown one finds a marvelous merging of the man’s
meaning; in living and in dying, the Old Man struck powerful blows
against the solidity of the “sum of all villanies.” As Dr. Du Bois wrote,
in the aforementioned book, of “his forty days in prison,” Brown,

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN’S EXECUTION

tkjnade the mightiest Abolition document that America has ever

^Wendell Phillips, addressing a vast mass meeting in Boston on
November 18, 1859, taking up this question of “wasted years,” said:

It seems to be that in judging lives, this man, instead of being a failure has
done more to lift the American people, to hurry forward the settlement of a
great question, to touch all hearts, to teach us ethics than a hundred men
could have done, living each on to eighty years. Is that a failure.

It may, however, be said that this is self-serving rhetoric, since its
author was himself a warm supporter of Brown and had been a militant
Abolitionist for over twenty years, and there is force to such an
objection. The fact is, however, that on this question, the militant
Abolitionists, having most fully identified themselves with the needs of
the most oppressed saw therefore most clearly. Here is an instance of
the apparent paradox— the achievement of objectivity through the
most intense partisanship, so long as that partisanship is with the most

oppressed. _ .

Still, in terms of Brown’s impact upon the broadest layers of Amer-
ican public opinion, the testimony of Charles Eliot Norton— embodi-
ment of respectability and sobriety-may be more persuasive than that
of Phillips. Soon after Brown’s execution, this Boston merchant and
scholar wrote to an English friend:

1 have seen nothing like it. We get up excitements easily enough . . . but
this was different. The heart of the people was fairly reached and unpression
has been made upon it which will be permanent and produce results long
hence. ... The events of this last month or two (including under the word
events the impression made by Browrfs character) have jdow more to
confirm the opposition to slavery at the North than anylhl"8^hl^ hdS
happened before, than all the anti-slavery tracts and novels that ever

written.

John Brown considered the institution of slavery from four points of
view: 1) he viewed the Negro people as people, absolutely the equal ot all
other people, and he therefore considered their enslavement as an
abomination; 2) he saw that the institution’s continued existence
increasingly threatened the freedom and well-being of white Americans
and the viability of a democratic Republic; 3) he considered slavery as
contrary to the spirit and the letter of the United States Constitution,
and therefore as an evil without sound legal warrant; 4) he viewed
slavery as institutionalized violence and the slaves as little more than
prisoners of war.

76 PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

In all these views it is possible to affirm — with the hindsight of a
century — that John Brown was right, and only on the third point did he
stretch matters in terms of historical reality, although even there he
grasped more of the truth than those who altogether disagreed with
him.

On the fourth point, which led him to the advocacy of militant
Abolitionism — i.e., resistance to the violence that was the essence of the
slave relationship— there persists considerable disagreement today.
Indeed, it is largely because Brown fervently believed this, and then
acted on that belief, that he is so widely held to have been mad. Several
points are to be considered in this connection. First, the view of slavery I
which held it to be a state of war between master and slave was classical I
bourgeois political theory— it is stated quite explicitly, for instance, in
the writings of both Montesquieu and Locke, and I have yet to hear I
either of those two gentlemen called insane. It may be remarked at this
point that while both Montesquieu and Locke did so analyze slavery,
they did not act toward it in the way that Brown did. That is correct, of
course, but to this it may be replied that neither one of them lived in
societies characterized and permeated by slavery, so that the stimulus to
such action was absent. It may also be replied that because a man
carries out in action the logic of his views surely does not prove him
insane.

Furthermore, it is a fact that Negro slavery in the United States had
its origin in war; it is a fact that its existence was based upon the
superior force of the enslaving class and their state apparatus; and it is a
fact that its conduct was a constant exercise of coercion and force. Of
great importance here was the study which Brown had made of the
institution of slavery, especially from this aspect, and his knowledge of
the militancy of the Negro slave in direct conflict with the stereotyped
views of his alleged passivity and docility. His frequent friendly rela-
tionship, in full equality, with many Negro men and women produced
in him a clearer view of the realities of American slavery than was
vouchsafed to most of his white contemporaries, let alone the moon-
light-magnolia-molasses school of mythologists masquerading in the
twentieth century as historians.

It is my opinion that with John Brown we are dealing not with
madness but with genius. We are dealing with a man who had a
profound grasp of the central issues of his era; and with a man of
exquisite sensitivity to the needs of his time and of his country. We are
dealing, too, with a man whose selflessness was complete.

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN’S EXECUTION

uis,also,quiteimPoss^^^a^B^nffi-^

°fhim as a man possessed unbalanced. The fact is that a

this sense either fanatical knowledge of the mood

basic part widespread within the Aboil-

repeatedly asserted that or 1 ’ . too, I think, is why he

important to live long as it it was ^ ^ u is lrue

did not Bee from Harper s erry' w ^ how t0 assure the safety of

that he, himself, said tha , that this determined

the prisoners he had with tarn were he to to. “"imp ortant. Yet 1

rs:

hanged. “In teaching us how to ie, Alcott: “a person of

same time taught us how ‘o ' .’ earnestness"; Louisa May

surpassing sense, courage, l^ution of Saint John the J ust took

Alcott set down m her diary. R “I wish we might

place today”; Emerson, speaking aVnol cry with the

have health enough to know virtue wh - Phillips speaking De-

fools ‘madman’ when a hero passes.’ . ^ ^ the cm hed and the poor,

*3^.

JS^SSp*™^**-***

on the throne." Bmwn knew so well, that

with meaning: "But that scaffold sways the futu ■■■■

PRELUDE 10 CIVIL WAR

It is that same note of defiance and of confidence that was struck by
the Negro neighbors of John Brown, who sang as his body was put into I
the rocky earth of his beloved Adirondacks:

Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound;

Let all the nations know,

To earth's remotest bound.

The year of jubilee has come.

Two thousand troops, plus cavalry and artillery, surrounded the site I
of Brown’s execution. Seated upon his coffin in the wagon taking him
to his death. Brown looked about him and remarked at the beauty of I
the Blue Ridge. He had already said farewell to his weeping jailers and
urged them to regain their composure; he had already handed the
immortal note to one of his guards warning that now he knew quite
absolutely that much blood would yet have to flow before the cancer of
slavery were excised; he had already said his last farewells to his beloved
wife (this was the only moment he broke a little, for he wept as she left
him); he had already offered cheer to his stalwart and very young
comrades waiting their turns into immortality (and each of them, Negro
and white, behaved as their leader had taught them to behave). So now
was the Old Man driven to the hanging place.

He mounted the gallow steps quickly and firmly. A white hood was
placed over his head and his hands were bound behind him. He was led
to the trap-door. And then he waited, for all the soldiers had to take
their proper stations, and the two thousand seemed more nervous than
the sixty-year-old man, bound as he was. An eternity of twelve minutes
passed as Brown waited; the executioner asked if he wanted a signal
before the trap was sprung, and he said no, thank you, but he would
appreciate it if they got on with their work. Did he have anything to say,
he was asked; no, he had said all he wanted to say. When all seemed
ready, the sheriff called to the executioner himself to do his deadly work
and spring the trap, but the man did not hear or did not respond at once,
and the call had to be shouted again. At last all was ready and the trap
was sprung and the rope (made of cotton, purposely, so that the
product of slaves might choke out Brown’s life) about his neck sought
to strangle its victim. But the Old Man remained alive a full thirteen
minutes, while repeated examinations were made of his heart, and
finally the physician said he was really dead and he was cut down.

Watching him were Robert E. Lee and the soon-to-be-called “Stone-

ON THE CENTENARY OF JOHN BROWN'S EXECUTION

an” Jackson (who wrote his wife that he feared for Brown’s soul) and
he actor up from Richmond watching with fascination the fun the
veil-known John Wilkes Booth; there, too, among the lines of soldiers
was an old man clearly not a soldier whose influence as Virginias
preatest slaveowner and leading theoretician of secession and treason
earned him a place-Edmund Ruffin. The latter, four years later,
hearing of Lee’s surrender to Grant, retired to his study, wrapped his
head in the Stars and Bars, put a pistol in his mouth and, belatedly, blew
away his mean life.

But less than two years after this hanging, an army of two million was
crushing the life out of slavery and treason, inspired in their work by
" j0fm Brown’s body lies amouldering in the ground, but his soul goes
marching on.” And about three years later, the great Frederick Doug-
lass was conferring in the White House with the President of the United
States (for the first time in history a Negro found himself in this
position). And the president was asking the Negro statesman how best
the government might get the news of the Emancipation Proclamation
into the heart of the South so that the slaves might learn of it and act
upon its news and so cripple the might of the Confederacy. Frederick

Douglass tells us;

1 listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and at his
suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, com-
posed of colored men, whose business should be, somewhat after the
original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states beyond the line of our
armies, carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within
our boundaries.

Surely here is a neatness to historical vindication that has few equals!
On December 2, 1859, memorial services were held for John Brown at
the Town Hall of Concord, Massachusetts, where revolutionists had
fired the “shot heard around the world.” Edmond Sears, the pastor of
the nearby village of Wayland, wrote and read these lines upon that

occasion;

Not any spot six feet by two
Will hold a man like thee;

John Brown will tramp the shaking earth
From Blue Ridge to the sea,

Till the strong angel comes at last
And opes each dungeon door,

And God’s Great Charter holds and waves
O’er all his humble poor.

PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

And then the humble poor will come
In that far-distant day.

And from the felon’s nameless grave
They'll brush the leaves away;

And gray old men will point this spot
Beneath the pine-tree shade,

As children ask with streaming eyes
Where old John Brown is laid.’

From Concord grounds to Charlestown gallows is a straight line; and
the Americans who perished there brought nearer “the far-distant day ”
There is no higher patriotism than to so live that having died men may
say: “He gave his whole life to hastening that day.” This is the heritage
lor all mankind bequeathed by the American Martyr, John Brown, and
this is the measure of the man’s greatness.

Published in Political Affairs, XXXVIII, December 1959, pp. 13-25. Re-
printed as a pamphlet, John Brown: American Martyr (New York- New
Century Publishers, I960). } Ncw

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

The Civil War

In its origin, the Civil War in the United States was an attempted
counterrevolution carried out by a desperate slaveholding class. The
aggressors were the dominant elements among the slaveowners, and the
resort to violence was long planned, carefully prepared and ruthlessly
launched. There was not unanimity among the slaveowners; some
feared that the resort to violence would fail and that its result would be
the destruction of the slave system. But those who so argued were
overruled and the richest and most powerful among the planter-
slaveholders carried the day for secession and war.

Why did the slaveholding class violently attack the government of the
United States in 1861? It did so because it had become convinced that it
had everything to gain and nothing to lose by a resort to violence; and,
in the past, whenever an exploitative ruling class has reached this
decision — and had the power to do so — it turned to violence. Here,
specifically, the decisive elements in the slaveholding oligarchy came to
the conclusion that if they acquiesced in the developments culminating
in Lincoln’s election in 1860, they would, in fact, acquiesce in their own
demise; that if, on the contrary, they did not passively yield, but refused
to accept this culmination, they had, at any rate, a fighting chance to
reverse the course of those developments. In other words, they decided:
If we yield now we shall be buried; if we do not, we may win and so bury

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

another. But if we lose we shall be no worse off than if we did not fights
i.e., if we lose we shall then be buried. Given belief in such an
alternative— and given the capacity to undertake it and carry it out— all
exploitative ruling classes have chosen the path of counter-revolution-
ary violence. Such classes are devoid of humanistic feelings; suffering
means nothing to them, since their rule is posited on human travail and
their wealth and power derive from its infliction; such considerations
were especially marked among the American slaveowners arrogant,
ruthless and racist to the core.

Affirming that a sense of desperation drove the slaveholding class I
onto the path of counterrevolutionary violence, leads at once to the
question: what made this class desperate? What convinced its leaders
that they had everything to gain and nothing to lose if they chose the I
path of civil war?

There were four great forces producing this result, interpenetrating
and influencing each other.

First: the momentous socio-economic transformation of the United
States north of the Mason-Dixon line and extending from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Mississippi River; second: the quantitative and qualitative
growth of the Abolitionist movement; third: the intensification of mass
unrest and class conflict within the South; fourth: the accumulating
impact of certain organic contradictions within the plantation-slavery
system.

The basic nature of the shift in socio-economic foundations in the
North appearing with the Revolutionary War, accelerating with the
War of 1812 and its aftermath and accumulating speed after 1840— was
the growing weight of industrialization and urbanization. It is in the
decade of 1850-1860 that the value of the product of the factories
approaches the value of the product of the soil for the first time in
American history; that is the great water-shed mark. Before that,
agriculture had significantly outweighed industry in the total economy,
after that the reverse was to be increasingly true. The turning point
comes in the decade preceding secession and marking the appearance
and growth of the new Republican Party. In 1790 about 5% of the total
population was urban (living in places of 2,500 inhabitants or more); in
1830 about 8% was urban; in 1860 about 20% was urban— and while this
urbanization did not completely skip the South, it was overwhelmingly
concentrated in the North.

The population leap in the United States is remarkable in the pre-

THE CIVIL WAR

civil War generation, ris.ng from OX !»

Zo but while half the popula ton of the in 1860.

”*“* '“r" “““

outside the slave-ridden areas. _ resuUs of these

° A rising industrial government of the

the presidency; it

termed the Pte™'h.nS,^exts A domestic and foreign policy to the
churches, the schools, the • ■ d jj s history during these

liking of the Slaveholding cto chamctemed c increasingly

decades. This politico-, deologica base was trans-
anachronistic and inhibiting political and ideological battles

formed in the manner indicated .Hen .P ^ (he ,a(e i840s and es-
and recurring crises marked t P was the smashing of the

pecially the 1850s; the cutawrtwa, . pobU Y> coalltio„.lype parly,

unde^the ^egem^ny of th^ industrial bourgeoisie, and the ultimate
victory of that party in the 1860 eleeuons. ^ ^ socio.economic
Additional decisive cha"8es . , . . ( y an(j with urbanization,

structureof theNorth. With the nseo .industry and feolh ils

appeared a more and ntort am* usjmkn* ^ ^ War ap-

organization and its consciousnes more repre-

proached. They found the exiles from the

1 hensible — here the influx of thousan roie-and found their own

Europe of 1830 and 1848 playe a s‘g federal government and

interests less and less oon«^red msofa^ the ! was by the

its policies were concerned, conflict appeared, especially as

the^challcnged and dtetraught slavocracy

population, whether its complexion be light

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

Significant distinctions began to appear among the commerce
bourgeore of the North. With the growth of factories in the North and

IkvM °Pmen 0f agncultural Production there, slave-grown produce
played a smaller and smaller part in the businesses of Northern
merchants. Increasingly, these merchants were engaged in hauling and
ng corn, wheat, cattle-products, machinery, shoes, clothing furnf i
ure, rather than sugar, tobacco, rice and cotton. The merchant bout'
geois.e had been the fundamental political allies of the slaveholdim,

aenerall “?h ^ °f the northern winS of the Democratic Part/

generally the preferred party of those planters. Now, this Northern

cornnT aa p nt,Cal bU'Warl< WaS split; this is of basic importance in
comprehending the actual division that occurred in the Democratic

Party with the elect, on of I860, so that two Democratic Party candi-

dates ran for the Presidency (Douglas of Illinois on the Northern ticket

Linco n t”,18' ^en uCky the S™thern)-without which split,

Lincoln would not have been successful

ni Was thCn the Wes,-from ‘he Ohio to the Mississip-

pi a m Omat Lakes was being swiftly populated. Pressure mounted
Fede/l democrat, c land-settlement policy on the part of the

the sametimmZnt’ ^ * ‘° 'he r‘gid resistance of ‘he planters; at
he same time, the movement was made possible because of the tying

ad ads Th l and/h; With th°Usands °f mil« °f "ewlyS
railroads. This in turn fed the growth of industry in the northeast- it

Camoun’5Sgra°dUn!le “7 fa™ WeS' and the facl0I?'ast' and “> defeat
,* .S8”d P,an ofan agricultural united front of western farmers

ing eas“ Hern P ^ fa™erS Wh‘Ch W°U'd outvveigh the urbanir-

This socio-economic transformation showed itself, among other
aspects, in the smashing of the traditional political apparatus and in
the coming to the fore, through the new party, of new demands
K£ thC interes‘s f ‘he developing classes; a protect"

nl pl . c 21 federalexPense, national currency and bank-
ing legislation, a homestead law, the exclusion of slavery from the
federal lands, a reversal of domestic and foreign policies favoring the

whkh hadCbeendUdlnS reJeCti°n °f ‘he vitiating of the BiH of Rihts
wh ch had been so promment a part of the cost of maintaining slavery

men? he0” Sef the/evolu“onary "a‘«re of the Abolitionist move-
ment, he cannot understand it. This movement hitherto has been

presented as either the unfortunate fruit of the labors of mischievous

THE CIVIL WAR

fanatics or as some kind of liberalistic, reformistic, benevolent enter-
prise. These views agree in ignoring the fundamental character of the
Movement: a Negro-white, radical effort to revolutionize America, by
overthrowing its dominant class. That is, Abolitionism sought the
elimination of that form of property ownership which was basic to the
power of the slaveholding class, and it was that class which effectively
dominated the government of the United States during the pre-Civil
War generation.

The movement, being revolutionary, suffered persecution and fierce
denunciation; but its members — Negro and white, men and women.
Northerners and Southerners, with a large percentage of youth, and
almost all of them not of the rich— persevered, as true revolutionaries,
and finally led the nation to victory. Its great curse, early in its life was
sectarianism; it advocated courses which persistently narrowed its
appeal— for instance, an extreme pacifism and anarchism. But as the
classes objectively opposed to the continued domination of slavery
grew, as the existence of slavery in the United States became a more and
more intolerable stench in the nostrils of civilized peoples in the world,
as the struggles of the slaves themselves mounted, and as the reaction-
ary offensive of the slaveowners impinged on the rights and beliefs of
ever wider elements in the population, the movement itself grew. As it
grew it found the sectarianism more and more contradictory and
absurd and so developed a much more rounded, flexible and politically
astute outlook; this in turn stimulated further growth. This growth was
qualitative as well as quantitative; the movement turned more and more
to effective political efforts and to the renunciation of a crippling kind
of pacifism, especially in the face of the institutionalized violence of the
slaveowners.

Increasingly, as the 1840s gave way to the 1850s, the Abolitionists
became admired and respected leaders of groups decisive in both an
ideological and a political sense; by the 1850s the New York Tribune
the newspaper with the largest circulation in the nation, whose Euro-
pean correspondent was Karl Marx — was decidedly anti-slavery,
though not actually Abolitionist.

It is not without interest that some of this sectarianism infected
working-class oriented and even Marxist-inspired groups. Some tend-
ed to view the conflict between a slave-based agrarianism and a wage-
labor based industrialism as merely a contest between two sets of
“bosses” concerning which “real” Marxists could have no choice.

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

Fortunately, Marx was then very much alive and when he was appealed
to for his opinion as to whether or not Marxian socialists should take
“plague-on-both-your-houses” position in this conflict, he replied that
he was appalled that anyone alleging adherence to his views could
possibly raise such a question. Of course, Marx insisted, socialists were
the strongest foes of chattel slavery because, in the first place, they
desired the liberation of four million slaves and because, in the second
place, as between industrial capitalism and agrarian slaveholding, the
former was the more progressive force and the latter was completely
backward and regressive.

The quantitative and qualitative growth of the Abolitionist move-
ment was seen by the slave-owning class. Its culmination in the sensa-
tional success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin early in the 1850s, the
extraordinary sale and influence of the economic analysis of the
backwardness of slavery produced by Hinton Rowan Helper, a non-
slaveholder from North Carolina, under the title The Impending Crisis
(1857), and then the noble martyrdom of immortal John Brown and his
Negro and white comrades, and the intense sympathy they aroused
throughout the North and the world, helped create a sense of panic and
desperation in the minds of the dominant slaveowners.

The rulers of the South always have sought to propagate the idea that
their region is “solid,” is united in support of the “way of life” charac-
terizing the area. This el fort is made today, and the picture it seeks to
spread is quite false; the effort was made in the days of slavery, and the
picture conventionally presented of that epoch— of a monolithic South
with the Negro slaves cherishing their chains and with all the whites,
regardless of class position, firmly committed to slaveholding domi-
nance in the name of white supremacy— also was thoroughly false.

The fact is that the slave South was an area torn by antagonism and
basic contradictions: slaves versus slaveowners, large slaveowners ver-
sus the smaller slaveowners, the non-slaveholding whites versus the
slaveholding whites, and especially opposed to the richest among them.
Far from the Negro people being docile and “ideal” slaves, they created
a heritage of militant and ingenious struggle during their crucifixion
that has no superior among any people on earth. They resisted their
oppressors in every possible way: they “slowed up” in their work; they
fled by the thousands; they rose individually in rebellion; they plotted
and rebelled collectively scores of times; they infused their stories and
songs and music and religion— every aspect of their lives— with this

THE CIVIL WAR

tral theme: resist slavery; struggle for freedom. In this sense the
Ce"'nificent liberation struggles of the American Negro people : today
m!8in direct line with and represent a splendid continuation of the pr
ar traditions of their entire history.

f°This militancy reached its highest point, in the history of American
lie v during the decade from 1850 through 1860. In that period more
s VipH -singly and in groups— than ever before; more individual
assaults against' slaveowners occurred than ever before; more slave
Ins piracies and uprisings occurred than before, and many of them had
a deeper political content-including the demands for the distritrarion
of the land — than before, and characteristically in this decade, unlike
the previous period, whites were involved in such plots and uprising.
ThePmaster class was keenly aware of this intensified unrest of t
slaves; their private letters, diaries and newspapers are filled with

C°Class s^ruggle‘between slaveowners and non-slaveowners character-
izes all Southern politics from about 1790 on; tat This peached
intense and most widespread form in the years from 1850 o I860, l ne
struggle appeared in the growing cities and especially in the predomi-
nant agrarian areas. It took the form of the creahon of new anti-
slaveowners political parties, and of significant

non-slaveowners to overthrow the political don’'naU.°"^r?’oaf"“e
tion lords The aim was the remaking of the political structure, of th
taxalmn system, of the educational system; the aim
ment of something approximating an advanced bomguo^democrat
societv Its greatest weakness was that while it opposed the slaveowning
ebss it did not oppose slavery as such; while it hated the planters, it los
no love for the slaves. The whole system of chattel slavery made
extremely difficult the forging of unity among the Negro and 1 white
victims of the plantation oligarchy, and while some advances towards
such unity were made-and terrified the Bourbons-the fact is that
these advances fell far short of the achievement of any teal s^anty^
But while the effort to overthrow the dominance of the slaveholding
oligarchy within the South was not successful, it was serious a
wonted that oligarchy very much. Many of its leaders actually feared

civil war at home before they could launch their coun,errevol““°"^
effort against Washington. This internal challenge to the continue

domination of the South by the Bourbons has b“n "eLaSt
in the literature; it is, nevertheless, one of the fundamental forces

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

driving the slaveholding class to the desperate strategy of creatin
Confederacy and attacking the United States government 8
In addition to the forces already described certain coLrf- •
organic to the nature of the plantation system as a sock, e t'°',s

iiHS

§i=fSH=-== j

IS*

SS5* “-itsss St

pment of the free-labor system outside of the South. One of the

THE CIVIL WAR

ting places of this developing conflict was the federal public lands; if
’hese were to be settled by free farmers and workers and by a wage-
based bourgeoisie then the political weight of the West would fall on the
anti-slavery side and the planters’ domination of the federal govern-
ment would end.

For all these reasons, the expansionism of the slave-South was
intense and notorious. It helped precipitate war with Mexico in the

1840s -a rather unpopular war outside the South; it helped account for

filibustering assaults against Nicaragua a little later; for the diplomatic
pronouncement by three U. S. Ministers in Europe that Cuba should
belong to the United States and not to Spain; and for the naval
expedition financed by the U. S. government through the Amazon
Valley region of Brazil, with an eye to weighing its possibilities as a base
for an extended slave empire.

At the same time, this expansionism precipitated the sharpest kinds
of political struggles on the national election scene; it was the Re-
publican Party’s promise that "not a foot" of federal soil would be given
over to slavery — and Lincoln’s insistence, after his election, on keeping
that promise— that finally decided the slaveowners that whatever the
Republican Party might promise as to the sanctity of slavery “where it
was,” the promise was useless in fact since if slavery could not expand
into where it was not, it could not last long where it was.

The Confederate assault upon Washington and the secession from
the United States was a counterrevolutionary development. It was
counterrevolutionary not only in its regressive motivations and its
profoundly anti-democratic essence — challenging as it did the integrity
of the bourgeois-democratic republic and the ideology of the Declara-
tion of Independence; it was counterrevolutionary, too, in that it was
done secretly, with malice aforethought, and against the will of the vast
majority of the Southern people. One-third of those people— the Negro
masses— abhorred the Confederacy, of course, and desired nothing so
much as its destruction which, they knew, would mean their own
emancipation. But, in addition, the majority of the eight million
Southern white people— there were in 1860 only about 300,000 actual
slaveowners— also detested the planting oligarchy and also were op-
posed to secession and to the whole Confederate conspiracy.

The bulk of the literature on the Civil War assumes or asserts the
contrary, and insists that the Confederate movement had the over-
whelming support of the masses of Southern whites, at least. But the

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

trutn is the opposite. This is why the leaders of secession made no effort
to submit the question of secession to a vote of the restricted electoral,
m the Southern states-prior to secession-and why, in fact thev
resisted all proposals for such a vote. It is for this reason, too, that this
so-called popular uprising disintegrated when put to the test of a wa
carried to the South by the invading and-allegedly-bitterly despised

In eight states of the Confederacy the question of secession was never
submitted to a vote of the electorate. In the three states where the
question of secession was voted upon- Virginia, Tennessee, and
exas— this was not done until after each of them had already been
committed to the Confederacy, and hostilities had actually begun
(except for Texas, where the voting occurred on Feb. 25, 1861). Further-
more, even the voting-held under war-time conditions, with secession
an accomplished fact, and with secessionists counting the votes-
showed these results: Texas, for secession, 34,794; against, 11,235;
Y'rginia, for secession, 128,884; against, 32,134; Tennessee, for seces-
sron, I04,0I9; against, 47,238. Moreover, even in these three, Tennessee
spht in hall, Virginia split in half, and the governor of Texas (the anti-
secessiomst, Sam Houston) was illegally superseded.

Only this background makes understandable the complete disin-
tegration of the Confederacy when it was put to the test of battle.
Pro-Bourbon historians, faced with this utter collapse, have no real
explanations. Thus, for example, Professor E. Merton Coulter, co-
editor of the multi-volumed and “definitive” History of the South, in
the volume which he himself wrote in that series, 77ie Confederate
States of America (1950), "explains” the collapse by saying it resulted
roma loss of morale, that “the spirit of the people gave way" (p 70);
or, why did the Confederacy fail? ... The people did not will hard
enough and long enough to win” (p. 566).

But Coulter's explanation explains nothing; it rather poses the
question in different words. Why w-as there a “loss of morale”; why did
the spirit of the people give way’? Because it was not a popular war;
because Congressman Aldrich and Governor Richardson and Edmund
Ruffin, and the members of the Confederate Constitutional Conven-
tion were correct when they feared that the Southern white people-let
alone the Negroes— did not favor secession.

Nowhere was Karl Marx’s genius more dramatically demonstrated
than in his grasp of the real nature of the Civil War and in his

THE CIVIL W AR

comprehension of the unpopular character of the Confederacy. I he
military experts of the world were agreed that the North would not be
able to defeat the South; at best they saw a long and drawn-out war
exhausting both sides with some kind of military draw resulting and a
negotiated settlement concluding the conflict. Marx disagreed; he held
that the North would defeat the South and do so rather quickly and
accomplish it utterly. And Marx insisted on this exactly because he
knew it was not the North versus the South, but rather the U nited States
versus a slaveholding oligarchy. Marx, of course, paid careful attention
to the class forces involved in the struggle; he followed with close
attention the procedure of secession; he noted that no plebiscite on this
was permitted. He insisted upon the oligarchic and non-popular char-
acter of the Confederacy.

The world’s military profession agreed that the Confederacy, with its
great population, its enormous area, its tremendous coastline, its
numerous military cadre, would never be defeated by the North (this
was another reason for the failure of E ranee and England to intervene
more actively than they did on the side of the Confederacy— why do so
when she could not lose?) Indeed, even Frederick Engels seriously
doubted the outcome of the war, and as late as September 1862, asked
Marx: “Do you still believe that the gentlemen in the North will crush
the ‘rebellion’?”

Marx replied that he “would wager his head” on that belief. It was
based, he wrote, not only on Lincoln’s supremacy in resources and men
(for this alone need not be decisive— witness the American colonies
versus Great Britain, Holland versus Spain, etc.), but also on the fact
that the South was not in rebellion, but that rather an oligarchy of some
300,000 slaveholders had engineered a counterrevolutionary coup
d’etat.

Individual monographic studies by Laura White, Georgia L. Tatum,
Olive Stone, Herbert Aptheker, Albert Moore, Charles Wesley, John
K. Bettersworth, Harvey Wish, Roger W. Shugg, W. E. B. DuBois, Bell
Wiley, and others have demonstrated the enormous amount of popular
disaffection— among Negro and white— which bedeviled the Con-
federacy, ranging from mass desertions, organized guerrilla warfare (of
which, by the way, there was almost none inside the South against the
Union forces ), mass flights of slaves, strikes in factories, hunger demon-
strations and riots, anti-conscription outbreaks, etc.

When one remembers the degree of treason among the officer caste in

SAVING TIIF. RFPl BI.IC

the United States Army— with almost none among the enlisted men— I
the pro-Confederate activities of Buchanan’s Administration in the I
days before Lincoln took office, the Copperheadism in the North, the
white chauvinism there, the graft and corruption with which the
bourgeoisie always conducts government and especially government
faced with war, the hostility of most Western European governments to
Abraham Lincoln’s government and the assistance given the Con-
federacy, one must conclude that there were grounds, apparently, for
the belief that the North would lose. In the face of all these sources of
weakness, Lincoln’s victory —and within four years, little enough time,
as nineteenth century wars were conducted, especially in the vast
distances of the United States — could not have transpired without the
active opposition to the Confederacy by the overwhelming majority of
Southern people.

In the result of the War, the sympathy for the cause of the Union felt
by the common people of all Europe, of Canada and of Mexico was
important. The role of the First International, under the personal
leadership of Karl Marx, in helping to organize and focus this popular
opposition, especially in Great Britain, is well-known. Less well known
is the important contribution to the Union cause made by the Mexican
revolutionary masses, led by the great Benito Juarez, in resisting the
efforts of France to conquer Mexico. Had this conquest been complete
and not seriously contested, the Confederacy would have had a long
land border with a friendly French power, and this would have added
difficulties to the imposition of an effective blockade of the Con-
federacy. It is somew-hat ironic that the Mexican masses helped pre-
serve the integrity of the United States, less than twenty years after the
United States had stolen from Mexico, through war, one-third of its
own territory.

In the actual fighting of the war, it was the common people — the
working men and the farming masses— who bore the brunt of the
battle, made the sacrifices in blood, crushed the Confederacy, and
saved the American Republic. The basic patriotism of these masses — in
the South and in the North — came to the fore and with it grew an
understanding of the stakes of the conflict so far as the cause of
democracy was concerned.

By now a considerable literature depicting in truthful and realistic
terms the absolutely decisive role of the Negro people in the Civil War
has made its appearance. It was to maintain and extend the system of

THE CIVIL W AR

♦heir enslavement that the counterrevolution was launched; here one
has a classical example of the profound involvement of the general fate
nf the United States, and especially of the democratic advancement of
1 United States, with the specific condition of the Negro people. Here
one sees how the system of the Negro’s special oppression almost
caused the suicide of the entire American republic.

The Negro leadership was in the forefront of the effort to make clear
the decisive nature of the slave system to the power of the C onfederacy
it therefore led in advancing the necessity to revolutionize the conduc
of the war. The war, if conducted passively, defensively, if conducted
only to “defend the Union” with an insistence that the institution ot
slavery was irrelevant to the conflict, would not terminate happily for
the Union. No, to defend the Union it was necessary to destroy the
power base of those who attacked it; to defend the Union it was
necessary to add to its resources the mighty power and passion ol the
Negro millions. To defend the Union it was necessary to destroy
slavery. The salvation of the Union required the emancipation of he
slaves; the emancipation of the slaves required the salvation of the
Union. Thus did the dialectics of history manifest itself in specific torm

in the great Civil War. . .

The process of revolutionizing the conduct of the war was a relatively
prolonged one; and it was one that required agitation, organization and
struggle. In this, the Negro masses were in the front ranks. And when
success was achieved in the basic change of strategy, to implement the
change, the Negro fighter would have to step forward and show his
mettle. The Negro people did so and did so with decisive results for t
course of the war. About 220,000 Negro men fought as soldiers; about
25,000 battled as seamen. Another 250,000 Negro men and women
served Lincoln’s forces as teamsters, scouts, pioneers (what are now
called engineer troops), cooks, nurses, fortification and railroad
builders, etc. And, in the South, the Negro masses were the eyes and
ears of the advancing Union forces; without effective military intel-
ligence, battles and wars cannot be won. The best source of such
intelligence for Lincoln’s army and navy came from the Negro masses
who knew-and know-the South better than anyone else. Meanwhile
Negro slaves fled by the thousands-probably half a million succeeded
in fleeing during the four years of war-and in doing th»^ithdrew their
labor power from the despised Confederacy and brought it to the side of
the Union. Dr. Du Bois once characterized this phenomenon of mass

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

flight as a kind of “mobile general strike” and the observation is highly
illuminating.

Conventional American historiography — deeply chauvinist as it is-^ |
presents the Civil War as a white man’s quarrel as a result of which
rather absent-mindedly the Negro people were given their freedom
Nothing could be further from the truth; the basic connection between
the institution of slavery and the source and nature of the Civil War is
clear, and the active role of the Negro people in fighting for their own
emancipation — and for the integrity of the Republic — is established by
the evidence. Rather than declaring that the American Negro people
were given their freedom as an incident of the War for the Union, it
would be more accurate to say that the Negro people contributed
decisively towards the salvation of the Union as part of their heroic
battle to achieve emancipation.

This W'hole matter shows again the deep interpenetration of the
history and struggles of the Negro people with the struggles of the mass
of the American people altogether to advance the cause of progress and
democracy; it shows, too, that in this organic connection no one is
doing anyone else any favors. This matter of Negro-white unity is a
question not of benevolence but of alliance.

Policies of compromise and gradualism — both of which were advo-
cated and followed prior to, and even during the early phases of the
war— are disastrous. Especially where the Negro question is con-
cerned— this being a principled question — such policies reflect in fact
acquiescence in Negro oppression; they are devices not for the elimina-
tion of such oppression, but for its continuation.

The Civil War demonstrates that decisive governmental acts are of
the greatest importance where the fight for Negro liberation is con-
cerned. Such acts possess tremendous practical and educational signifi-
cance. Thus, it was widely held that it was “impossible” to make soldiers
of Negro men, give them guns and put them in the field fighting with
white men against other white men. But what was held to be “impossi-
ble” was soon seen not only to be possible, but necessary. Since its
necessity was comprehended by the Lincoln government — with that
government being prodded by the Negro people and the Abolitionists
in general — it did adopt the policy of arming Negro men and putting

them into combat on land and in the sea. And there was nothing
“impossible” about it; the dire prophecies as to what would happen and
how whole regiments of white soldiers would desert at once, etc., did
not come to pass.

THE CIVIL W AR

ss sr— tstu * — - “

Executive acts, such as lh= "‘^td ' h.te idlers, and-

Emancipation Proclama-

- basic s^or^ A^ with the CWd

War and its °UtCe°”eurgeoisKle^ocratlc form is achieved. Industnal

5SSE25. ssr

swiftly ahead towardach.evmg^comp! ^ industrial capitaiism,

market. At the same tim , ' working class multiplies

its necessary antagonist leaps
in a short period

upon a national scale by ' Thlrtrenth and Fourteenth—

By constitutional amendments ^ j efforts atcompensa-

the institution of chattel slavery is P™ thwarled Here appeared an
tion by some of the former s a

extremely significant preced ’ iththeThj rt eenth Amendment, sever-
revolutionary transformation. With the Thirtcentn a

ai billion dollars worth of private P™P ^^"‘^fentire social

tiorra^preced^nUhat the presenfruling class prefers should

In preservingJthebou^®°^f®^1°^^|^°™’n't"jtdd^j^lt;on! in .the
destructto^of the system of

ssrsssss— ^

I terminates as the Second ^mencan • towards monopoly

str £ s *.8— . -

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

retention in the country of a large mass of especially exploited workin I
people, and wanting the political support of the former slaveowner-?
fail to complete this Revolution is another question. They are a leading
element in the coalition of forces which hurls back the threat of the I
slaveowners, but when that common foe is defeated, the bourgeoisie !
betrays the coalition— and especially the Negro people. It allows the
former slaveowners to remain the dominant plantation owners- it
makes of them satraps-“little foxes,” in the words of Lillian Heilman’s
incisive drama-and the basis of the Republican-Dixiecrat reactionary
alliance is laid back in the 1870s betrayal of the hopes of the masses.

Much unfinished business remains from the Civil War, and much
more unfinished business has accumulated for the forces of democracy
and peace in the century since that war was fought. The “handling” of
these questions creates every day’s headlines in the American press;
they remain fundamental social questions, on a new level for the
United States of the 1960s.

Their nature cannot be understood, however, without a comprehen-
sion of the great struggle waged in the United States from 1861 to 1865.

J hat strugg*e was a momentous landmark in the effort to secure a
‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The struggle
continues, on new and higher levels, in our time. The American people
have not been found wanting in the decisive struggles of the past, and
they will not be found wanting in our own new and challenging epoch.

Published as a pamphlet. The American Civil War (New York- Inter-
national Publishers, 1961).

The Emancipation Proclamation

Contemporaries differed most sharply in their reactions to Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation, issued in preliminary form on September
22, 1862, and in final form on January 1, 1863. The differences reflected

he class divisions in the United States and demonstrated the truth that
Las basically derive from the groundwork of these divisions.

' Much of the Northern press, especially that controlled by merchants
with close ties to slaveowners, as the New York Herald and the Journal
Commerce, denounced the Proclamation. Many of the reactions
were so vehement that the President, reading, as he said, “a batch of
editorials,” was moved to ask himself: “Abraham Lincoln, are you a

man or a dog?” . .

The Confederate press, as one would expect, spewed vitriol rather

than ink. The Richmond Enquirer, for example, asked with reference to
the President and his Proclamation: “What shall we call him? Coward,
assassin, savage, murderer of women and babies? Or shall we consider
them all as embodied in the word fiend, and call him Lincoln, the

Fiend?” .

Copperheadism in the North matched the elevated language of its

Southern ideological brethren, so that, as an instance, the Democratic-
dominated legislature of Lincoln’s own Illinois formally resolved that
his Proclamation was “a gigantic usurpation ... a total subversion of
the Federal Union ... an uneffaceable disgrace to the American
people.”

The rich in Great Britain, sympathetic to the reactionary outlook of
the Confederacy, economically allied with the planters, and jealous of
the industrial and commercial competition that the United States
already offered and fearful of what she would offer if still united in
the future, greeted the announcement of emancipation in similar terms.

But among the workers of Great Britain— though now especially
suffering because of the Union cotton blockade— the Proclamation was
greeted, as Henry Adams, son of the U. S. ambassador, testified, by a
great popular movement.” Meetings attended by thousands from mine
and mill acclaimed Lincoln and simultaneously denounced their own
Tory government and the bosses who dominated it.

In the United States most of the white workers and farming masses,
though infected by racism, generally hailed the Proclamation as a blow
for human freedom and a means towards hastening peace. Thus, in the
border state of Maryland, the Cambridge Intelligencer, speaking for
non-slaveholders, rejoiced in the Proclamation for it showed the war to
be one for freedom. It went on:

There is another sense in which this is a war of freedom. There are other
men in the South to be freed as w-ell as black men . . . The social system of the

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

South has never been anything short of despotism — a tyranny equal to an
of the age. The mind has forever been bound here. Freedom of opinion tJ
never been tolerated below Mason and Dixon's Line ... Let the mind b

ree • • • There can be neither prosperity nor happiness where these ar!
enslaved. are

Similarly, a New Y ork City workingmen’s paper, The Iron Platform, in
welcoming Lincoln’s Proclamation, pointed out:

1 here is one truth which should be clearly understood by every working-
man in the Union. The slavery of the black man leads to the slavery of the
white man . . . If the doctrine of treason is true, that “Capital should' own
Labor, then their logical conclusion is correct, and all laborers, white or
black are and ought to be slaves [italics in original].

Of course, the Left — the Abolitionists (including the Marxists)—
were pleased with the Proclamation, declaring it to be a document
guaranteeing immortality to the man who issued it.

And the Negro people as a whole greeted it, in the words of Frederick
Douglass, penned at the time, as “an anthem of the redeemed,” “the
dawn of a new day,” “the answer to the agonizing prayer of centuries.”

Dominant American history-writing today, product and bulwark
that it is of the status quo, tends, in substance, to agree with the
estimates offered by contemporaries hostile to the Proclamation. Natu-
rally, the adverse opinions are expressed without vituperation, but the
general verdict conveys the impression that the Proclamation was more
sham than reality; that its significance is minor, its issuance demagogic;
that its impact, at least at home, was very nearly nil, or, if anything,
adverse to the Union.

The reader or student is told that the Proclamation freed no one, that
it was only a military act, that its actual purpose was simply pro-
pagandist^. To this is added the insistence, so general in today’s
“respectable” historiography, that the war itself was needless, that its
outbreak reflected sheer stupidity, that its cause is unknowable, that
slavery was benign and truly irrelevant to the war’s origin, and that the
war’s consequences were regrettable. At the same time, the point is
conveyed, either by indirection or explicitly, that, in any case, of course,
the so-called slaves were Negroes and “everyone” knows what that
meant and means in terms of inferiority, docility, and the manifest
impossiblity of real liberation since subordination to the superior white
represented and represents acceptance of a natural and immutable
condition.

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

* more sentimental version of basically the same chauvinist
rlaptrap — aimed especially at the quite young-is to treat the Pro-
bation in terms of a gift from on high to the Little Brown Brother
through the beneficence of the Great White Father who rather absent-
mindedly and in the midst of more significant labors deigned to loosen

th Actually, the Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most momen-
tous documents in American history and in the history ot the Negro
oe0pie As the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, this
document, too, svmbolizes and embodies a decisive turning point in our
history. It is, indeed, of great consequence m the whole magnificent
record of humanity’s unceasing effort to throw off oppression and

stand forth truly free. . . .

In all this, the centrality of the enslavement of the Negro people is to

be observed. Slavery is the fundamental question of pre-Civ, 1 War
history; it is this fact which made the policy towards slavery ol basic
consequence during the war itself. Without understanding this it is not
possible to understand the Emancipation Proclamation. The wide-
spread recognition of the existent fact that the slave question was at the
root of the conflict required agitation and guidance and struggle, to ge
the necessary action to accompany the recognition, to make real the
recognition, likewise required constant agitation, alertness, guiding
activity and fearless struggle.

The task was complicated by the very great power of the slaveocracy
in its homeland and in the North where a thousand economic, political,
family, and ideological ties gave it great influence The task ^ was
complicated by the very desperation and fierceness of the slaveholders,
attributes characteristic of exploiting classes fighting for their lives, he
task was complicated, too, by the neat balance of forces which pre-
cariously held the border areas— Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky,
much of Tennessee and Virginia (to become West Virgima)-on the
side of the Union; these were areas with great manpower, enormous
resources and with the only military approaches into the Confederacy.

Complicating too, was the slaveholders’ insistence that at stake in an
assault upon slavery was the whole concept of the sanctity of contract
and the sacredness of private property-“civilization itself as the
phrase went, and still goes. Hence, their insistence that Abolitionism
was not only Black Republicanism, but also Red Republicanism,
Socialism, agrarianism, levcllism, and other epithet-slogans of the

100

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

moment. Hence their warnings to the well-to-do of the North that y
property in slaves goes on Sunday then property in land will g0 J
Monday, and property in factories on Tuesday. If one can be abolish,!!
on moral grounds, on the grounds of the welfare of the majority or th
improvement of the social order, why not the others on the same
grounds, changing only “slave” to “toiling farmer” and to “waee
worker?” 5

Historically, the reply of the other property owners was: Power is
perilous, of course, but it is also delightful. Now you slaveholders hold
power and that fact impedes and frustrates our fullest development and
keeps us out of power. So, we are opposed to your continued domina-
tion, a domination based upon the ownership of a type of property
extinct among us. Yes, the precedent of attacking property— of any
kind, even such as wcdo notown — is distressing, and we would prefer a
gradual dissolution of such property ownership, with generous com-
pensation. But, in any case, power involves risk. You slaveowners have
held power and now face its loss; we capitalists will have power— with
its risks, no doubt— but we will have it and you will make way for us.
We do not mean to destroy you, but we do mean to supersede you. We
mean to rule this nation, all of it, with every ounce of its resources, with
the entire range of its market, from tip to tip. We will not surrender the
Union. We need it all and we will have it all and none will stunt our
growth. We want it all for what it offers now, and, magnificent as this is,
for the infinite possibilities it will offer in the future.

So, says the new Republican Party, we will not touch slavery where it
is. Indeed, we will guarantee its perpetuity, and repeal the Personal
Liberty Laws in the North and in other ways see to it that the Fugitive
Slave Law is rigidly enforced, but we will not allow the further
territorial expansion of slavery by one inch. (On February 27, 1861, the
House of Representatives passed a Resolution, 137-53, calling for the
repeal of the Personal Liberty Laws and strict enforcement of the
Fugitive Slave Act. On February 28, 1861, the House, by 133-65, and
the Senate two days later, by 24-12, approved a projected XIII Amend-
ment to the Constitution (the so-called Corwin Amendment) making
slavery perpetual where it was . Of course, the firing on Fort Sumter
made all this merely of historical interest.)

The slaveholding class will not accept this, as later it will not
acquiesce in compensated gradual emancipation. The now obsolete
ruling class will not peacefully and willingly give up its domination. It

THE emancipation PROCLAMATION 101

~ not abide by its own laws, and it finds the democratic implementa-

ti0Moreov°eSr, hknowfthat no further expansion means not °nlV los^of
. Nation- it means more or less rapid suffocation-it means, in fact,
^termination. And this class is keenly aware of how shaky is its power
fhJme- how detested it is by four million slaves, and how despised by
ten million non-slaveholding whites. Should it retreat nat.onaUy
;h0w weakness, give up domination of the Federal apparatus, could

hold its own at home— in Alabama, in Georgia.

Even to pose the question was insufferable. No, it would not simply
accept defeat; it would not step down. It would fight for
dence,” that is, for the perpetuity of a freely expanding . slave system, h
building of a mighty slave-based empire, the splitting, if not the
“e destruefion. of the Republic. It would turn to force and

violence to counterrevolution, to real treason.

Finally, it had two more trump cards. One was the great ^P^denee
of Western Europe, especially of Great Britain, upon its crops-above
a 1 co t on-andP,he enormous investments and lucrative connections
he id b V wealthy Britishers in the South. The other was the slavocratic
ideology especially white supremacy, that had pervaded the Amen, :a
"ere and permeated the brains of Ameren white .people for
two renturics This played upon by the very real allies ot the <~on
federacy in the North, might so immobilize and weaken Union rests-

tance as to assure the Republic’s deatn. Hf>mnrratic one and

The voung Republican Party was a bourgeois-democratic one ana
represented a coalition of the industrial bourgeoisie, who exercised
hegemony, some merchants, the free farming population most of th
budding working class, the Negro people (there ^re in l860, about
250,000 in the North), almost all the Abol.t non, sts (among £»» «««
the Marxists) — with these components freely critical of official fa y

P°i'ts poltcy, refieefive of its composition and of the dominant ^ernents
of that composition, was extremely vacillating. Its Proble™
course, exceedingly complex and its difficulties

together help account for much of its hesitancy. Yet, fundamentally
that hesitancy, epitomized in the excruciatm^y slow ^

Lincoln reflected bourgeois concern— even in this progress! P ,

over revolutionary activity, especially
lenee white supremacy. Lincoln, in his Fi
;i Congress in December 1861, put the matter quite explicitly.

102

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

I n considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection |
have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purp0’^
should not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary strugg)e
I have, therefore, in every case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of thj
Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part. . .

Tactically, too, a demand limited to the defense of the Union seemed
wisest, for it appeared broadest. No matter how one felt about slavery,
no matter how pathological one’s hatred for Negroes — the flag was
fired upon, the integrity of the Republic was being tested, the destruc-
tion of the country was being sought. Rise to defend the flag in a just
cause, to preserve the Union, to safeguard your assaulted country.
What could be broader than that?

It was the task of the Abolitionists to demonstrate that their program
was not narrowing; they had to show that it was not a question of their
having a special interest — no matter how noble — to which they were
unreasonably attached regardless of all other considerations. It was the
task of the Abolitionists to show that they were at least as patriotic as
the next man (for a generation, of course, they had been denounced as
seditionists, probably in the pay of Great Britain). They had to shew
that their insistence upon emancipation arose out of that patriotism as
well as out of humanism and devotion to democratic principles and a
proper concern with rescuing from slavery millions of men, women and
children. The Abolitionists had to show that their special devotion to
freedom made them more perceptive than others of the general needs of
the Republic and made them particularly effective patriots.

Only a revolutionary policy could defeat the counterrevolutionaries;
only a policy directed towards uprooting the key source of the
slaveowner’s power— slavery — could destroy that power. Why?

1) Because such a policy put an end to the real danger of active
intervention on the side of the Confederacy by Western Europe, since
the masses there simply would not tolerate or participate in a pro-
slavery war.

2) Because such a policy invigorated Northern arms, and where it led
to disaffection among officers and men, cleansed the Army by exposing
Copperheads.

3) Because such a policy secured the active and full and fervent
participation of Negro masses in the struggle— and before the war
ended about 230,000 Negro men fought in Lincoln’s Army and Navy
and about the same number of men and women labored for those
services as cooks, scouts, pilots, waggoners, nurses, etc. Without these

the emancipation proclamation 103

have been Preser'^ .. hd„yed stimulate resistance to slavery and

and uprisings, potentia * ’ ee— as Dr Du Bois has pointed

of a^obUe generalstrike, with something like 500,000 succeeding

fsmCJ“motoXn"tat had come sommraUy to racist
insist that only the integrity of the succeed. And

necessary to wage a Pn"clp'ed in liberation.

alliance was forged and in which the stated goal wa g

Lincoln was told a thousand »>"" £_Vese were

“unthinkable”; the white people would never

the alarms raised by th P .. . ti,ev 0ften say, with a

manage to ally themselves -dh-cuon a be t the oftensj,

heavy heart. What, it was asked. R“°*n® Ht„de^Make soldiers

104

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

soldiers. Each, it was solemnly asserted, was absolutely impossible- 1
attempt each was fanatical and mad, and would result only in disaster°
But, Haiti was recognized and her Ministers did come to Washington
and the Capitol did not fall down; the slave-trader was hanged
publicly, in New York City, and the Republicdid not collapse; Ne*ro*
were enlisted in the Army, and the only complaint that persisted was
that there were not enough of them; Negro soldiers did fight with white
soldiers against Confederate troops and they fought very well, and
without them, said Abraham Lincoln and General Grant, it was
difficult to see how the Civil War would have ended with a Union
victory. The “practical” ones were, in fact, abettors of traitors; the
impractical” radicals were, in fact, decisive contributors to victory and
it was the adoption of their program, finally, that made victory
possible. J

In the past— not to speak of the present epoch— attempts at policies
of too late and “too little” did not work. All experience shows that
when clear, vigorous policies are adopted without equivocation against
racial practices, those practices are overcome; if the object really is
social progress and democratic advance, the policy of “grad ualism” and
of “moderation” simply does not work.

All this is what the Emancipation Proclamation meant and means.
Its meaning is not to be found in its dry listing of counties and parishes
and states exempted from its provisions. All that we have indicated is
contained within the context of the Proclamation and was actually
achieved by struggle in the field; it was maintained and pushed to
reality, after the Proclamation, by intensified struggle
The Abolitionist movement, and the Negro people as a whole, played
an indispensable role in transforming the character of the war. From its
ST?* people like Frederick Douglass, J. Sella Martin, William
Weils Brown, Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, Thaddeus Stevens,
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, saw the need of the hour and
labored together— men and women, Negro and white— for the libera-
tion of the slaves and the salvation of the Republic. In addition, the
grass-roots agitation of the Negro masses to be allowed to get into the
light against the slaveholders was very telling, especially as Union
casualties mounted.

Step by step, very slowly, objective necessity— perceived, inter-
preted, and brought into living reality by courageous people— led
Lincoln to pursue a policy of emancipation. "It must be done. I am

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

105

, iven to it," Lincoln wrote to a Pennsylvania Congressman, and he
italicized the words. Again, he said to a Kentucky friend: “I was, in my
Lest judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the
Union, or of laying strong hold upon the colored element. I chose the

^ This in no way, of course, withdraws a tittle of the credit due Lincoln.
Naturally, the ending of chattel slavery was not the result of one man’s
will or act, but rather of a whole historic revolutionary process. Yet its
final human instrumentality was Abraham Lincoln, that Lincoln who,
with all his doubts and his more than touch of racism and all his
responsibilities, with all his hesitations and all his terribly difficult
problems, did affirm: “1 am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not
wrong, then nothing is wrong.”

It is to be added that though Henry Raymond of the New York
Times, on learning to his displeasure that Lincoln intended to announce
emancipation, urged him to do it in the form of a military order,
Lincoln did not do so. While his Proclamation twice cited military
necessity— an overwhelming reason, surely, in time ol war!— it was not
cast in the form of an Order, and it concluded by calling the Proclama-
tion “an act of justice” and invoking upon it “the considerate judgment
of mankind and the gracious favor of almighty God”— hardly appro-
priate language for a “mere” military measure.

Lincoln knew that the contest he led was for the preservation of
popular sovereignty, of elementary democratic rights, of that govern-
ment then more highly responsive to public will than any other in the
world, of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This
contest he led successfully, not stopping at the revolutionary confisca-
tion of three billion dollars’ worth of private property. Of Lincoln,
Marx wrote, with his typical sagacity, in March 1862.

[He! never ventures a step forward before the tide of circumstances and
the call of general public opinion forbids further delay. But once 'Old Abe
has convinced himself that such a turning point has been reached, he then
surprises friend and foe alike by a sudden operation executed as noiselessly
as possible.

The Emancipation Proclamation heralded the change of Union
strategy from one of futile legalistic defense of the Republic to one ol
aggressive reestablishment of the integrity of the country by transform-
ing the economy of the enemy and so assuring his military defeat. The
Emancipation Proclamation vindicated the policy and program of the

106

SAVING THE REPUBLIC

Left; it proved that the policy of “moderation” was a policy of 1
postponement and therefore in fact a policy of acquiescence in ^
status quo. The Emancipation Proclamation demonstrated, once agaij I
and very dramatically, the centrality of the Negro question in aj|
American history. It showed the interdependence of the needs of the
Negro people with the needs of general democratic advance. It demon-
strated in origin and implementation, the unversality of progressive
struggle. International solidarity, personally led by Marx and Engels
was shown to be vital to our own national interest.

The Emancipation Proclamation symbolizes the essence of what
Lenin referred to as the “world-historic progressive and revolutionary
significance of the American Civil War.”

Would that, with the XIII Amendment, the full promise implicit in
the Proclamation had really come to pass. Would that the advice
offered by the General Council of the First International in an Address
to the People of the United States, drafted by Karl Marx, in September
1865, had been followed:

Injustice against a fraction of your people having been followed by such
dire consequences, put an end to it . . .

The eyes of Europe and the whole world are on your attempts at
reconstruction and foes are ever ready to sound the death-knell of re-
publican institutions as soon as they see their opportunity.

We therefore admonish you, as brothers in a common cause, to sunder all
the chains of freedom, and your victory will be complete.

It remains for our generation “to sunder all the chains of freedom.” It
is our generation, the American working class, the Negro people, the
farming masses, the youth, and all democratic-minded people, who will
bring to fruition, in the full meaning of our own day — at long last, and
after one hundred years — the Emancipation Proclamation.

In this way we shall be continuing into our time the patriotic efforts
of those who, a century ago, abolished chattel slavery and preserved our
country. We shall be fulfilling Lincoln’s promise, uttered at Gettysburg,
that this nation “shall have a new birth of freedom.”

Published in Political Affairs. XXXIV, February 1955, pp. 56-65. Reprinted on “The
Centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation," Political Affairs. XI. II, Januarv
1963, pp. 17-26.

■•ft'

racism and

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

Class Consciousness in the United States

The President of the United States recently

— when covered with the loin‘

cloth of “People’s Capitalism. , capitalist state

n is not likely, however, that the thead “^t reHectsa

would have made such a statemen . nolitical development

certain national character of ra & P ^ United States does

demonstrated most dramatically in e indeed it does not

not have a broadly-based sociahst movement, that, mdeed, h doe ^

have any national labor party and a 1 ? f th et raditi0nal two-

overwhelmingly within the ruling class confines of the tradition
party system. be no real interest in

hking'themTt'hoe'va'lue^stwong— there ap^rstoh^area^hostility

to socialism in the trade union existed in

the position m other major capi a is ’ forty years ago.

the American trade union movement some fifty, even tony y

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

How shall one explain these peculiarities and apparent parado
What is the reality concerning these matters in the United States tod «

The fundamental explanation for the relatively low level of politf^
development and class consciousness among the producing masses031
the United States is, substantially, the same as the explanation of*
similar phenomenon noted by Engels in Britain some seventy years ag3
and classically analyzed by Lenin. I refer to the rooting of opportunism
and class-collaborationism in imperialism, with the corruption of
segments of the metropolitan power’s working class, possible for the
ruling class on the basis of the super-exploitation of colonial and semi-
colonial peoples. This system engenders chauvinism and jingoism
which tend further to divide and weaken the working class.

Yet, while all this is ot fundamental importance and must be borne in
mind at all times, it remains necessary to inquire further into specifics
and peculiarities. So far as the United States is concerned, we should
like to draw attention, quite briefly, to certain of the most important of
such specifics and peculiarities.

A part of the “New Conservatism”— the ideological mask for cold
war reaction has been a rendering of American history in such a
manner as to strip it of its revolutionary content. Notable in this
connection has been the influential school of historians who seek to
remove even from the American Revolution its revolutionary nature.

Two elements in the Revolution, however, are of especial importance
for a proper understanding of the sources of the relatively low level of
class consciousness in the United States.

There was, first of all, no real nobility within the rebelling colonies as
the result of a nearly total absence of feudalism (there were some
exceptions, as in Maryland and upper New York). This tended to
reduce the civil-war quality of the Revolution and to lessen the intensity
of the internal class struggle. This does not mean that elements of civil
war played no part; on the contrary, they were an important part of the
Revolution. And class struggle played a no less important part in the
origins, conduct and consequences of the Revolution. But both were
relatively less notable than was true, for example, of the English
Revolution of the seventeenth century, or the French Revolution of the
eighteenth century.

There was, secondly, with the success of the Revolution, the wide-
spread acceptance of the idea that now popular sovereignty had come
into its own; that, once and for all time, people’s revolution had

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

111

-rfed and henceforward there had only to be vigilance to protect
SUCLC inst reaction. The idea that it might be necessary yet agai ^

“ ^fundamental transformation-to further revolutionize society
seemed anachronistic, or “alien,” if not criminal subterfuge for reac-

'^The^basic ideas that went into the drafting of the Constitution and the
i.hiscite which resulted in its adoption seemed to certify that th
P vernment was something really altogether new (as m truth it then
8 Tand that finally “government of the people, by the people and for
Te o ople” had been established. For large masses of Americans, or
Inany generations, the government was “our government ; many still

h"outWone century the United States was the beacon light of

c i trtnnkinH “Liberty has fled Europe to find a re.ugt here,

widThomas Paine; “Send me your huddled masses,” sai^E^ma
Lazarus in words engraved (with what irony today!) upon our Statue o
Liberty And it was believed that to desire revolution in America was o
indicate that one was a newly-arrived immigrant not yet able to shed his

EIn everything that has been said above, the reader will notice that the
Negro p opb and the American Indians are omitted. They had no part
i!X process In the United States, where there was very little
feudalism, there was very much present the p^-e-fcudal socia \ iom i of
chattel slavery until less than 100 years ago. The impact of this up
American life has been enormous, and such is the corrupt‘"8 °f

the poison of white chauvinism that the system of oppress, on

millions of “free” Negroes exists to this day. , had

Another consideration connected with the country s orugms has had
alasting impact on thequality of its thought andpolitics “owiy

of America was, of course, a manifestation of the whokhjtonc epoch

of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This Ne™.W«ld wa
viewed as the very embodiment of a fresh start for man^ "d.'‘
accident that the locale of the early U topias was arrays ^Un Ameno.
Connected with this was the idea of America as the place where the

" tah:^°" MtionofPthisidea; here a people in the
New World had thrown off their shackles, unchai“d ' -

free of Lords and Priests, and, led by a remarkable body
Jefferson, Madison, the Adamses, Washington, etc.-were establishing
a republic that reflected the triumph of Reason in politics.

112

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

To all this is added the fact that the United States embodied »h 1
typical capitalist notion of freedom as the absence of restraint, rath
than the path to social progress. It was widely believed (and still is) thj '
the question of freedom has relevance only to matters of politics and
never to matters of economics— since it was insisted that capitalism i
freedom in economics.

This and other peculiarities of American origins and patterns of early
development have tended to retard the growth of class consciousnessy

Much the same applies to certain features of the original American
government. Partially for legitimate reasons of defending the Revolu-
tion against monarchical and Tory reaction, but fundamentally for
reasons of curbing the “excesses” of democracy— that is, the direct
participation in government of the masses— the Constitution estab-
lished a careful “separation of powers,” which tends, rather efficiently,
to prevent effective manifestation of the popular will. To this was added
the “balance wheel” concept of government, so that no group could
become predominant and so threaten the republican structure.

The federal structure of government, by increasing the number of
sovereignties, has also tended to make more difficult the effective
concentration or even development of a popular will, or a popular
political organization of nationwide scope. This structure was con-
ceived by Madison as an answer to Aristotle’s insistence that demo-
cratic government could function only in very limited areas. But
Madison’s formula was somewhat paradoxical; unity through diver-
sity, a federation of sovereign units. In terms of the needs of a bourgeois
democratic republic the arrangement was altogether ingenious; in
terms of the active and real participation in politics of the masses of
people on a national basis, the arrangement favors the few against the
many.

Politically and economically, too, the vast United States has been
without a single center; in the U nited States there is no city comparable
to the meaning of Paris to France, or London to England. This,
reflecting the great influence of differing regions and sections, has also
helped produce a scattering of political effort, and extreme difficulty in
the organization of mass national movements and organizations.

The great demographic mobility of the U nited States also has worked
in the same direction. An essential feature of American history has been
the process of conquering a continent— and a bloody and ruthless one it
has been. In 1790 the geographic center of population in the United

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

113

. Baltimore Today it is in Western Indiana; it has
tin0Ul°?rThis is Quhe apart from the millions and milhons who

Si Thi^hasTnten^ root-
lessness of American life. ^ ^ ^ important factor in

The migration of millions Rut the resultant divergences

J development of American capitalism. But the resuha ^

in national backgrounds, languag residence and other re-
cantation. Moreover.because ofliteracy.resme 1870

Cements for voting the working class,

to about 1920, meant that a g p . were in fact without the
particularly workers in the basic 'nd“s ’ the majority

vote. To this should be adde< 1 X franchised, and that

r Southern whites similarly have been

wi"r:s, the r ss

advantage: the most exploited se ^ of thig upon eff0rts to form

deprived of the right to vote. P to ^ring about

large-scale labor and Negro pohtica part es been veryferious.

large-scale Negro-labor political PdrU^P h Uniled states

And while it is largely true, as we it is also

was relatively free of the classica , U^°P d classical example of

true that the United States had given the worW a ctaw

industrial feudalism; i.e., whole towns corporations. The

industries are located are the pr^ ^Mrehcl^uitc literally
workers’ homes, the town s po ice e ^ c any Xo form elemen-

organizations, under such circum-

'^The5 question oFth^spMiad^oppre^mn of the^Ne^o^pwpleJSia
subject meriting extended discussion. imDortant sources for the

^erical orgamzatI0n

among the working people 0 t e g h ing 0fthe Democratic

CES'X'— - ■' "

114

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

movement in the 1890s, the solid bulwark of reaction. Because of
seniority questions and because of the unity of this reactionary bloc, it
has acquired exceptional strength. It has been a main source of electoral
strength for the Democratic Party, while that Party nationally has
tended to be, and is more and more becoming, the Party favored by the
labor movement and by the Negroes of the North. This greatly impedes
the formation within the United States of a third party of workers,
farmers and Negro masses — a party able to smash the bosses’ two-party
system.

The enormous resources of the United States have been a basic
source of the great strength of the bourgeoisie, who have possessed
these resources, up to the present. The existence of enormous areas of
public lands was important, as Marx noted in the first volume of
Capital, in making possible, as far back as in colonial days, a relatively
higher wage standard than in Europe. The presence of these public
lands (up to 1890) played a part in reducing the exacerbation of class
struggle. The abundance of other natural resources — coal, iron, oil,
gold, silver, copper, lumber, etc. — made possible a lavishness on the
part of the American ruling class and a degree of corruption, both in
government and in business, that is probably without precedent in
human history. This has provided a large amount of crumbs with which
to buy off succeeding layers of a labor aristocracy and with which to
tempt — too often with success — the intelligentsia.

And this, together with the succeeding waves of immigrants, with
each new one tending to fall to the bottom of the social scale (most
recently, it has been the Puerto Ricans who have not escaped this fate)
has given an appearance of greater “social mobility” than in Europe.
And this gave rise to the propaganda stories about America being a
land of limitless opportunities— the figure of Horatio Alger is an
American one, and the optimistic axiom “from rags to riches” also is
American. This, of course, has been basically ruling class mythology;
but it has penetrated and has merged into the national psychology.

Incidentally, this should help explain why Social Darwinism has had
so large and long a vogue in the United States. William Graham
Sumner, for forty years a professor of sociology at Yale University,
produced a widely-read book in 1883 called What Social Classes Owe to
Each Other. In it he insisted that the answer was — nothing. That is,
Sumner insisted that the rich were rich because they were better than
the poor, and the poor were poor because they were no good. He

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

115

in the United States, which no amount ot tneorumg
^Nevertheless, the professor's

of an exploitative societies.
That applies with great force t0 '^"rtory oTthe U mted States

was accompTnhd^by^var against the Indians, ^vars

rfa FroS ^ « wars the Uncart

Philippines, and both world wars. Except for he CivU

(and even that touched drrectly only one-.h.rd of

^^rrSme^ter— ^

especially shice/witMhe partial^xceptkm course!

United States has never

was written more than a decade be ore triumph of the liberation

Vietnam. For Aptheker’s Historic Turning

forces in Vietnam see his essay. 41 57 Editor]

Point," Political Affairs, LIL (March, 1973): pp. 41-52. LO.to j

116

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

In the postwar period, the Korean “police action” and the Cold Wa
have served as a pretext for the ruling class to demand “national unity”
in the face of the “emergency.” They have served also as the excuse f0
military expenditures that in their total are quite without precedent
Thus, since 1947 the United States government has spent about 5oo
billion dollars for direct war expenditures.

All this has been adroitly exploited by the bourgeoisie to mute class
consciousness. Capitalist economists insist that without these colossal
expenditures it would be impossible to maintain “prosperity.” That and
similar theories have had a considerable influence in developing oppor-
tunism and class collaborationism among leadership elements in the
trade union movement. With few exceptions, the top union leaders
support the aggressive and expansionistic foreign policy.

The connection between opportunism in the labor movement and
imperialism is especially apparent in the United States. We know that
the relatively high living standards enjoyed by the top layer of workers
are the result of super-exploitation of the colonies.

However, in the United States, to this must be added the enormous
tribute brought into the country by its economic domination and
exploitation of the “free” world, which is to say, that part of the world
which may still be “freely” exploited by American capital. American
investments abroad total more than those of all other capitalist coun-
tries combined, and in the past ten years they have grown at an
unprecedented pace.

Capitalist prosperity, however shaky it may be, however partial are
its benefits, remains the greatest single source of class collaborationism.
With so-called prosperity, this policy seems to “pay off,” as we say in the
United States. This is an illusion, but one that strongly induces oppor-
tunism.

A witty French friend, visiting the United States, remarked to me,
paraphrasing Lincoln Steffens’s remark anent the U.S.S.R.: “I have
seen the past, and it works.” So long as it seems “to work”— particularly
given the pragmatic bent of Americans — the people will more or less
abide by it.

And the ruling class is doing everything to make them abide by it. It
maintains an enormous propaganda campaign against Marxism, so-
cialism, communism and the socialist countries. Without a doubt, this
subject is discussed and written about more than any other, with the
possible exception of pornographic subjects which form the backbone
of American “letters” today.

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

117

Together with the propaganda go social and economic pressure To
hea partisan of Marxism is to be a pariah; to be known as a rad'aa'

^ vite beggary; to be a Communist is to invite persecution. The Com
fun st Party has been driven into semi-legality by the U. S . govern-
Xt today three members of its National Committee are still mja
" ost’of the remaining members recently have been in tail and are still
„d r indictment. The Party’s 78-year-old Honorary Chairman,
William Z Foster, confined to bed for the past years as a result of severe
illness, is still under indictments a dozen years old, and ,s notallowed to
obtain proper care and treatment in the socialist countries.

The trade union movement has been harried with anti-commums
Of an official and unofficial kind. Individual states have Pa^ed laws
aimed against progressive ideas. And the FBI maintains a doss e on
literally millions of Americans who at some point in their lives sup
rXubhcan Spain, or urged the boycott of Imperial Japam o
have Negro friends, or were militant trade unionists, or otherwise
conducted themselves in a manner displeasing to Edgar Hoove •

A refurbished Cold War ideology has made its appearance to justify
all of the above repression and to prepare for the realization of Th
American Century. This New Conservatism, which has even secu-
larized the concept of original sin, insists upon the essentml and
immutable rottenness of mankind. It Preaches an e l.tism <
basic precepts of democratic theory; it insists that bureaucrat sm
characterize all forms of social organization; it denies basic elements
the Age of Reason, such as the concept of causation and the idea o
progress. It breeds cynicism and apathy; it laughs at devotion and ^ocui
concern as manifestations of idiocy or criminality; it repudiates all
value judgments; it spits at life as one vast delusion.

That is one method of mass corruption. Another is racism. All t
tends to give to much of American life, especially in the large i» »
air of extreme tension and fierce competitiveness. All these together
foster very high rates of crime, especially among the youth, suicide
drug addiction, alcoholism and other forms of social escape^ T
spread of mental illness is undoubtedly connected with this. Half the
beds in American hospitals are occupied by the mentally il ; it has been
statistically estimated that one out of ten Americans now Iwmg v^l at
some point in their lives enter an institution for the mentally s .

; Institutions of social welfare and care are m crisis 'hrou8d°ut‘he
country. Even Professor John K. Galbraith, in h,s very one-sided book.

118

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

The Affluent Society, emphasizes that in the midst of all this alle
“affluence,” institutions and services of a public welfare character ar^
decay. Thus, slums are increasing at the rate of 4 percent per year a 'h
what housing construction is going on is devoted almost entirely t
fulfilling the needs of the rich and the upper middle class. Hospitals ar°
scandalously overcrowded; so are schools— and so are prisons. In tlT
latter, riots and rebellions are a weekly occurrence. No wonder that in
the United States, politicians, ministers, and editorial writers are
alluding more and more often to the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire!

With all the “prosperity” and all the talk about “people’s capitalism,”
since World War II there have been three economic cycles in the United
States, and the recession of each succeeding one has been more
prolonged and deeper than the others. The last (1957-58) was the most
prolonged and the deepest. And with each recovery, the number
remaining totally unemployed increases; today the government itself
admits 3.3 million altogether out of work. The figure is an underesti-
mate. [In 1976, government figures showed 8.8 million people unem-
ployed.—Editor]

While the “people’s capitalism” propaganda alleges the end of
monopolization of ownership and control, the fact is that monopoliza-
tion has been considerably accelerated, as evidenced by the numerous
bank mergers. And while the propaganda holds that all Americans are
owners of shares in the corporate economy, official data for 1956
showed that only 5 percent of the population owned stock, actually a
lower percentage than in the 1930s, when about 7 percent of the
population owned shares. Since World War II, in fact, there has been a
sharpening of class polarization. The process is described, albeit rather
superficially, in the recent best seller, The Status Seekers, by Vance
Packard.

In the land where “poverty has been eliminated,” the Census Bureau
reported that in 1956 the median family income per year was $4,237.
This was the unadjusted dollar (taking no account of the postwar
inflation), before taxes which take up at least 25 percent of the average
family income. This source showed that, as of 1956, the income of 34.5
percent of American families was less than $3,000 per year. [Statistics in
1975 provided by various government agencies show that the tendency
toward the relative and absolute impoverishment of the working class
in the United States continues, and at an accelerated rale.— Editor]

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

119

I v t according to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 1956 a family of
, a minimum annual income of about 54,400. Other esf-

f0 as those of the Heller Committee of the University of California,
m orted the needed income to be about $5,000 a year. Taking either
r'La*e over one-third of the population lives m families whose
™al income before taxes, is less than $3,000. How far has the U rated
States come, with all the boasting about unparalleled prosperity,
from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “one-third of a nation that was ill-

fCAnd Irnust be added, the U.S. government figures show the median
qnmfal'income of Negro families in 1956 came to $2,289. Let it not be
forgotten that there are about nineteen million Negroes in the Unite

STis a basic truth that there exist in the United States workers and
bosses- those who own the means of production and those who do not.
Hence* in the States, too, the Marxist analysis of capitalism fully
applies. And that it is vindicated there, too, where the bourgeoisie have
been especially favored, demonstrates its universality.

What one has in the United States, therefore, is not the absence of
class consciousness, but a relatively lower pace of development of class
consciousness, which most recently has been rising. This consciousness
has reached the point, despite the particular circumstances outlined
above, of large-scale union organization, of increasing stnkevof^mg
militancy and of growing indications of political independence on the
part of the working class. This latter fact-especally shown m the
elections of November 1958— is acutely worrying the ruling class and

^ObfeXeneX particularly of the working class and the Negro
people, force the appearance of opposition to ruling-class polmy. This
has been rising in the area of domestic politics; what is new is that it has
been gathering momentum in the area of foreign policy. 'n«eas'"S ’>?■
the excuse of “emergency” is wearing thin; the propaganda about the
“Soviet menace” is growing stale; and the conviction is spreading that a
modem major war would be so catastrophic that it simply must never

be permitted. The average American ,s coming 10 r,ea'‘“ n‘hd‘ “ y_
foreign policy directed against the U.S.S.R. and People sCh.na, threat
ening to involve the United States in a war with those powers, is simply
insane so far as the real interests of the American people an =

At the same time, popular resistance broke the back of the worst

120

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

features of McCarthyism, though its vestiges are many and serious. The
libertarian and militant traditions of the American people cannot be so
easily turned into their opposite, as the ruling class would like. Thus, on
the cultural and ideological fronts there has been mounting resistance
to reaction and to the New Conservatism so that today, unlike three or
four years ago, the latter ideology by no means fully dominates.

Nor has the bourgeoisie been able to smash the organized Marxist-
Leninist component in the United States. There was dire crisis in the
Communist Party in 1956-57, and some of its consequences are still
being felt. But the crisis is over, the worst is overcome. The Party lives
and is regaining strength. It has a great, an historic, role to play and its
science, devotion and leadership are needed by the working class, the
Negro people and the masses generally in the United States.

Published in New Times ( Moscow) number44and47, 1959. Reprinted as a pamphlet.
Class Consciousness in the United States (New York: Jefferson Bookshop. 1959).

White Chauvinism: The Struggle Inside the Ranks

White chauvinism is a problem only for the exploited; for the exploiters
it is a weapon— carefully forged and regularly refurbished.

The ideology of white supremacy is not new; on the contrary it was
born of slavery and has been American reaction’s trump card for three
centuries. The struggle against it also is not new and progressives today
who understand this to be a life and death matter would do well to study
something of that history.

As a beginning toward this aim I shall examine some of the evidences
of the presence of white supremacist thinking within two of the major
progressive efforts of the past— the Abolitionist and the early labor
movements— and shall focus attention upon the struggles against this
evil conducted by Negro participants.

WHITE CHAUVINISM

121

The entire movement aga'nrtch ^ W tQ that system

fight against wh.te supjemac.sUht nk . sa,d a slaveholder to the

j,s its rationalization it Marfineau, “that Negroes are more
^"Tu^bt'Xan and brute, the rest follows of eourse, and

lmus, liberate all of mine." enactment of the Thirteenth

From before the Revolution th rrfuti this siander. You

Amendment Negroes devoted *». AWcan. t0 the American

complain of British tyran y^ ^ a,s0 hard, when you hold

colonists in 1774 but Are y the law of nature, equal as

men in slavery who arc entitled tol V f ^ own eye> that you may
yourselves? . . . pray, pulUhebeam brother's eye.” "There could be
lee clearly to pull the mo " e“he Negro Abolitionist, Hosea Easton in
nothing more natural, to indulge in a tram of thoughts

1837, “than for a slave-hold* g slavery. . . .‘The love of money

and conclusions that favored * i ;otaries to teach lessons to their
is the root of all evil ; it will >ndu ■ 1 destroyers of their species in

little babes, which only .us t0 come.” And , in

this world, and for the torments < fof universal
1860, a committee of New - relevant today;"' What stone has

male suffrage, asked questl0*s hand has refused to fan the

been left unturned to degrade^ Vh A ican artist has not

name of popular prejudge = agams t us^ Wha wrelchedness?

caricatured us? What wit has ^ laughed^ spirits, What

What songster has not mad . pew few, very few. . . •

press has not ridiculed an con e ^ effect up0n white Aboli-
Such an atmosphere was n ^ NegrQ as not quile human, or as

tionists: many of them thoug d within the movement an

childish, stupid, meek. There J a feeling of condescension,

attitude of toleration, an air o^pa of lhe Negro Aboli-

and among the man> 1 persistent struggle against this

tionists to that movement was their p

racism. . . f earliest Negro newspaper (Freedom s

The very first editorial of the earhc g ^ ^ but still firmly

Journal, New York March 16. ^ ^ int0 the current of

popular feelhig and ar^impemept^fy^Boating^on^re

122

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

and of our efforts and feelings, that in forming or advocating plans f0r
our amelioration, they may do it more understand ingly?

Characteristic were the impassioned remarks of Reverend
Theodore S. Wright before the 1837 convention of the New Y ork Anti-
Slavery Society. There, insisting upon the falseness of white superiority
and the presence of its advocates within the Abolitionist movement,
Wright said: “I fear not all the machinations, calumny and opposition
of slaveholders, when contrasted with the annexation of men” with
such views. “These points,” he continued, “which have lain in the dark
must be brought out to view. ... It is an easy thing to ask about the
vileness of slavery at the South, but to call the dark man a brother ... to
treat the man of color in all circumstances as a man and brother— that is
the test.” He went on at length: “I am sensible I am detaining you, but 1
feel that this is an important point” for he knew that “men can testify
against slavery at the South, and not assail it at the North, where it is

tangible What can the friends of emancipation effect while the spirit

of slavery is so fearfully prevalent? Let every man take his stand, burn
out this prejudice, live it down ... and the death-blow to slavery will be

struck.” . . ...

One of the most persistent manifestations of white superiority within

the Abolitionist movement was the assumption that its white members
were to do its “thinking,” with the Negroes appearing as exhibits or
puppets. Among certain of the whites there was a feeling that they were
to do the writing and editing, formulate policy, devise strategy; the
Negroes were to assist where they could, improve— and keep on fleeing
the patriarchal paradise! Negro Abolitionists did not fail to denounce
this arrogance and to insist upon the terrible injury it was doing to the

A prime example of this occurred in 1843 in connection with a Negro
National Convention held in Buffalo. Here a leading Abolitionist,
Henry Highland Garnet, proposed that the convention urge the slaves
to go on a general strike demanding freedom, and that, when the
demand was rejected and the masters attempted to break the strike with
violence, the slaves answer this with insurrection. After prolonged
debate, the convention rejected— by one vote— the proposal.

Most of the white Abolitionists were then still largely tied to the
Garrisonian ideas of moral suasion as the only proper anti-slavery
method and so denounced Garnet’s idea. This, Garnet received as an
honest difference of opinion, but when certain of the whites expressed

WHITE CHAUVINISM

123

I ,fo,hethinkingoftheco„^:^^X

Pf;0he American Anti-Slavery counsei," she was

her fears that Mr. Garnet had an escaped slave, re-

favored with a scorching .reply, so weH as a slave and

linded Mrs. Chapman that no one others, what the

S those Who had escaped came » I tell yo ^ ^ ^ „You
monster has done and ts arc not the only person who has

that rhave received bad couns . productions have been

££ your humble servant tha^s hamb P i ^ expected

liced by the « ^etr apologists, but I rcaUy

Lrc from ignorant slaveholders w chapman. . . ” For Mrs.

looked for better things from Mr ^ ^ pubii hed promptly in

I Chapman it is to be sai ‘ .. had a salutary effect.

' The Liberator and unquestiona Y ^ nant {actor in the oppost-
The patronizing attitude wa Abolitionist movement to the fre-
tion which cropped up within ionai Negro conventions and

quent and vital city, state, regional a . against slavery and

societies that played a key role of The hostility within anti-slavery
discrimination. This, too, *aSfa papers and magazines ^ Negr°“
groups to the establishment o. P . ^ Dougiass had m mind

themselves. It is to a great d^^^er newspaper Vte North Star
when, in the first number of hl ^ { which met much hostility

(December 3, 1847)^ ^^ ^ had bcgun the paper no
from the Garrisomans -he decla “ of appreciation of the

from a feeling of “distrust or ungrate ^ q{ ^ laborers his
zeal, integrity or ability th he had done this because of the fact

department or our cause, “he ha h the man to demand

•that the man who has suf 'e^an to cry out- and that he who
redress — that the man struck is • manto advocate liberty. U

has endured the cruel pangs ofs as > > be our Qwn representatives an

isevident,”heconcluded, that wem nQt distinct from, but in

advocates, not exclusively but pecu y. $truggle {or hberty and
connection with our whltef"™f r ht and essential that there should
equality now waging, it is meet s as orators> for it is in these

arise in our ranks authors and ^ed.tors ^ rendered t0 our cause.

capacities that the most permanent g upon the absolute

It is this same weakness, this

124

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

equality of the Negro, which is important in understanding the decisi0n
of the majority of those in the American Anti-Slavery Society to ]
disband in May 1865, when the demise of chattel slavery was clear. The
Negro delegates to the Society’s convention of that year— like Robert
Purvis and Frederick Douglass— opposed the move. They pointed out
that the constitution of the organization called for the elimination of
discrimination as well as slavery and they insisted that freedom for the
Negro was still very far from complete both in the North and in the
South. Until, said Douglass, the Negro in the South had full political,
economic and social equality and until jim crow vestiges of slavery had
been abolished throughout the land, the national society dedicated to
these aims should hold together and fight. Slavery, he said, “has been
called by a great many names, and it will call itself by yet another name;
and you and 1 and all of us had better wait and see what new form this
old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come
forth.”

When it is realized that such an appeal did not convince a majority of
even so advanced a group as the American Anti-Slavery Society, it
should be clear how significant to the aborting of Reconstruction was
the failure among progressive groups, to grasp the key importance of
the Negro question.

The same failing has plagued the labor movement since its inception.
After the Civil War, with its destruction of chattel slavery, its preserva-
tion of bourgeois democracy and the integrity of the nation and its
tremendous boost to industrialization, the trade union movement
leaped forward. But from the beginning white supremacist thinking and
behavior crippled it. And from the beginning it was the Negro who most
clearly saw and most persistently pointed out the necessity of unity and
who, in the cause of this unity, attacked all signs of chauvinism.

A very early post-Civil War strike in the South illustrates the
condition. In 1866 the white bricklayers of New Orleans, having formed
a jim crow union, struck for higher wages. Negroes continued working
and the bosses filled the places of the strikers by hiring more. As a result
the strikers issued a call for a general meeting of all bricklayers and the
Negro newspaper, the New Orleans Tribune, organ of the Radical
Republican party, editorialized: “We hope that the colored bricklayers,
before entering into any movement with their white companions, will
demand, as a preliminary measure, to be admitted into the benevolent
and other societies which are in existence among white bricklayers. As

125

WHITE CHAUVINISM

WHITE Lit au —

ers they may an come to an

>eers' . bricklayers intend to use in c,nd in their

Xte bricklayers intend find in their

»•-»■ ■>»

tion of trade unions in this country, t bi indeed, Sylvia’ own

„ ,866 under the leadership his quamies-class

creates! weakness, which so trag “ y , hone5ty and great admin-
^ crtmisness enormous energy , P .. ■ • “i etters from the

"XVwas white 'T’

South,” published m the Phdad lph whUe formally calling,

brought to the fore by the independent organ^ g{ ^ ^ {or such
workers, their calls for un^ a h FinaUy, with the accumulations
unity from certain of the ; white leaders h^sel{,0CaU more actively

of all these pressures, which brot« among the total of 1«

for Negro-white unity, nine g Nati0nal Labor Union. Thes

delegates to the 1869 convention of the Na^ railroad workers

Negroes, representing hod earn . figure in the history of

and painters were led by the g-a estjioncrer^ caulkere

Negro trade union orgamzat o , » y Myers, speaking, as he

in perfect silence.” powerful and far-reaching is the

I “Gentlemen,” he began, silentbut P ^ co,ored laborer by the

126

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

would guarantee the potency of the American trade union movement
“I speak today,” he concluded, “for the colored men of the whole
country, from the lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific—
from every hill-top, valley and plain throughout our vast domain—
when I tell you that all Negroes ask for themselves is a fair chance; that
you shall be no worse off by giving them that chance; that you and they
will dwell in peace and harmony together; that you and they may make
one steady and strong pull until the laboring men of this country shall
receive such pay for time made as will secure them a comfortable living
for their families, educate their children and leave a dollar for a rainy
day and old age. Slavery, or slave labor, the main cause of the
degradation of white labor, is no more. And it is the proud boast of my
life that the slave himself had a large share in the work of striking off the
fetters that bound him by the ankle, while the other end bound you by
the neck.”

Though this stimulated the adoption of good resolutions by the
convention and the appointment of a Negro organizer, the resolutions
were not implemented and the organizer was not used. Negroes shortly
thereafter, again led by Myers, held their own convention of the
Colored National Labor Union, in Washington from December 6-10,
1869. Over 200 delegates attended from Negro organizations and trade
unions in twenty-three states including eleven in the South. In their
address to the American people they insisted they opposed “discrimina-
tion as to nationality, sex, or color.” “Any labor movement,” they
asserted, “based upon such discrimination . . . will prove to be of very
little value.” Indeed, it would be “suicidal” for it would encourage
“dissensions and divisions which in the past have given wealth the
advantage over labor.” Specifically urged was a common phalanx of
the Irish and German and Chinese, the Northern mechanic and the
Southern poor white, men and women— all who labor and had been “so
long ill taught” that their “true interest is gained by hatred and abuse of
the laborer of African descent.”

How pertinent for the American labor movement today is this call
from the doubly-exploited, and therefore doubly-sensitive, Negro
workers of eighty years ago!

The immediate post-Civil War labor movement failed and among the
several reasons for this is the influence of white supremacist thinking
within the workers’ organizations.

A somewhat similar course marks the record of the next great

WHITE CHAUVINISM

127

E ». u»„ u.«. ™

COnS t Tfmmded secretly in 1869 because of boss hostility and persecu-
^f^lThrouVh tre early seventies, maintained a P=u=
Jbmueh the terrible years of the “Long Depression (1873-79) and

Knee through the te r y ^ class conscious m v.gorous

"^However this organization by no means made a complete break with

rLTgrof ^ ^ and

eagerness of ^‘chauvinism, especially when

rgrdTthey

S Sat " wholly composed of white

wrote early in 1887 ot havmg au ™ whQ came was welcomed and

noticed, she commented t y coated with the courtesy usually

every woman from b'acK * 1 his town_ lt was the first assembly of
extended to white ladies alo the criterion to recognition as

the sort in this town where ■ co or ^ added could listen to their
ladies and gentlemen. Seeing t > . tic^ and accept them with a

enunciation of. he cymbal «rf a

I Sefeven though expounded in a consecrated house and over the
word of God.”

1 28

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

Nevertheless, jim crow locals existed and much of the top leadership
including the Grand Master Workman, Terence V. Powderly, were
quite opportunist on this question. Increasingly as compromising
tactics developed in the Knights in face of burgeoning monopoly
capitalism, the deterioration faithfully reflected itself on the Negro
question. fc

Typical of the keen awareness of this disastrous change was the letter
written in the summer of 1887, by a Pittsburgh Negro steel worker. So
significant and characteristic is this document that I will quote it at
some length. “As a strike is now in progress at the Black Diamond Steel
Works, where many of our race are employed,” wrote the worker, “the
colored people hereabouts feel a deep interest in its final outcome. As
yet few colored men have taken any part in it, it having been thus far
thought unwise to do so. It is true our white brothers, who joined the
Knights of Labor and organized the strike without conferring with, or
in any way consulting us, now invite us to join with them and help them
to obtain the desired increase in wages. ... But as we were not taken into
their scheme at its inception and as it was thought by them that no
trouble would be experienced in obtaining what they wanted without
our assistance, we question very much the sincerity and honesty of this

invitation I am not opposed to organized labor. God forbid that 1

should be when its members are honest, just, and true! But when I join
any society, I want to have pretty strong assurance that I will be treated

fairly If white workers will take the colored man by the hand and

convince him by actual fact that they will be true to him and not a
traitor to their pledge, he will be found with them ever and always; for
there are not under heaven men in whose breasts beat truer hearts than
in the breast of the Negro.”

The status of American labor in our own time demonstrates the exact
truth of the words of this Negro steel worker written in 1887 — “If white
workers will take the colored man by the hand and convince him by
actual fact that they will be true to him and not a traitor to their pledge,
he will be found with them ever and always.’’

In concluding this brief survey of the efforts of Negroes to combat
white chauvinism within two of the greatest people’s movements in our
history I reemphasize that this barely touches the general subject. A
history of white chauvinism would delve fully into its basic socio-
economic origins, and trace the appearance and development of its
numerous stereotypes and manifestations. It would examine its impact

HISTORY OF ANTI-RACISM IN THF. UNITED STATES 129

non the totality of American life, and would shed new light on every
laior facet of our past. From such a study fuller understanding would
emerge of the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the numer-
ous third party movements (and especially the Populist movement), the
fight for women’s rights, the battle against imperialism, the develop-
ment of socialism. .

White chauvinism today is the specific tool of American imperialism.
That imperialism is the main bulwark of world reaction; therefore the
struggle against this chauvinism, led by the Communist Party, assumes
world-wide significance. During the Civil War the life of the nation
depended upon Negro-white unity; today that remains true, and, in
addition, the universal fight against fascism and war requires this
Negro-white unity. The duty and necessity for this struggle, devolving
first of all upon the American white masses is, then, crystal-clear. On
the success with which Negro-white unity is forged depends, quite
literally, the firm establishment of world peace and the progress ot our
country towards democracy and socialism.

Published in Masses & Mainstream. Ill, February 1950, pp. 47-57.

The History of Anti-Racism in the United States:
An Introduction

There is, of course, an abundant literature on the nature, history and
defenses of slavery in the United States and on the history of the
movements against slavery. There exists, also, a considerable h erature
on racism in the United States; its origins, nature, institutional forms
purpose and function. There is in addition some extant wntings-not
very much— on efforts to eliminate reflections of racism, as struggles

130

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

against peonage, against jim crow, and against specific forms of racist
practices, as in travel, education, employment, and housing.

There is, however, almost no literature treating of the history of arm -
racist thought in the United States; indeed, so far as 1 know, there is no
single book devoted to this subject and precious few articles that deal
with it in any way.

Certainly, works treating of anti-slavery— as example, that by
Dwight Lowell Dumond in his later writings, of W. E. B. Du Bois,
Charles H. Wesley, Louis Ruchames, Thomas E. Drake, John Hope
Franklin, Benjamin Quarles, James M. McPherson and me— have
brought forward evidences of anti-racist views but this was neither
sustained nor systematic; where it appears, it tended or tends to be
incidental rather than fundamental in even these writings.

Similarly, in studies of racism one will certainly find references to
rejection of this ideology, but the works are studies of racism, not its
opposition, as the very title, for example, of Winthrop Jordan’s book
makes clear: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,
1550-1812 (1968).

The point here is that “white over black” was one of the attitudes of
(white) Americans toward the Negro; one not only had the Black
person’s attitude toward himself— which, of course, is very much a part
of “the American attitude”— but one also had attitudes toward Black
people by non-Black people living in the United States which was not
one of superiority but rather was one of either questioning the stance of
superiority or of rejecting it, and in some cases rejecting it passionately.

There are a few partial exceptions to this rule. For example, James
M. McPherson’s The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the
Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1964), especially on pages
134-53, treats of opposition to racism; less effectively, Thomas F.
Gossett in his Race: The History of an Idea in America (1963), in his
final two chapters, also deals with opposition, but neither book is
meant to be a history of anti-racism. The book which comes closest to
presenting racist and anti-racist argumentation is Louis Ruchames’
excellent reader, Racial Thought in America, of which only the first
volume has been published as of this writing: From the Puritans to
Abraham Lincoln (1969).

One might wonder whether the absence of a body of literature on
anti-racism in the United States is not due to an absence of anti-racism
in the country? The evidence is against this view. It shows, on the

HISTORY OF ANTI-RACISM IN THE VN.TEU STATES 131

ts saamsg zsSZTA

Genovese has agreed w.th him. PTof^ames M ^

white, and make the nation, whit J monolithic and in both

white South monolithic an t phillipsian-Nevins-Genovese-

cases this is altogether national history a

McPherson view gives to Southerr , htstoy^ ^ maintcnanceofthe

static quality; that is, a qua ly was and is a struggle to

status quo, instead of one whose esse K is this {uUy

maintain that status quo and a slrl!Sg,e « d nationai

dynamic quality which has character^ ,,^""0 nhe central

*» -

E. Morrow suggested (Mis, .-Pi- nersuade Northern white

1961), that its P-PO* -as not so ltoB white

people— -and espectally the youth and intelligentsia of the ruling circles

among such people-of the ju^e oHlavejy. that ,his

Quite recently, Anne F. Sc the slaveowning class

propaganda did not convince the ^ at least, that

of the South; that they seem to ^^^"“‘^".Women's Perspec-
many of them were. J'hat ls t e P „ m ne Jourml of American
live on the Patriarchy in the 1850 s, in r ^ ^ that this

History (June 1974). Presen^ „theensiUement of Black people had
KrSTrf .fir own subordinate position in the

"^ThisTuling-dass'sense^oTurgency in terms of persuading their own

132

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

white population — young and old, men and women, rich and poorer
the justness of a pro-slavery and racist ideology was intensified because
that ruling class dominated a blatantly male chauvinist, elitist and
oligarchic social order, all of which produced moods of acute doubt and
actions of protest and even, at times, near-rebellion. Add to this the
originally fraternal and revolutionary character of Christianity and the
intensely egalitarian and democratic essence of the verbiage in the
Declaration of Independence and one can understand, I suggest
something of the almost frantic tone to the slavocratic and racist
propaganda that issued forth incessantly from figures like Dew
Fitzhugh, De Bow, Calhoun, et al.

Might one not suggest that if much of the urgency of the argument for
slavery derived out of the strength of anti-slavery ideas— in the South as
well as elsewhere— then perhaps the extraordinary intensity of racist
argumentation may derive in part at least, out of the existence of anti-
racist ideas?

To be opposed to slavery— even less, to be opposed to the rule of the
slaveowners— did not mean, of course, that one was opposed to racism.
To reject racism was a profoundly deep rejection of the entire extant
social order; this is true in the United States at the end of the twentieth
century and it was markedly true in the preceding three centuries. This
makes all the more significant the fact that there was in those centuries
rather widespread questioning of racism and even considerable rejec-
tion of it.

T he history of anti-slavery begins with the first slave; similarly, the
history ol anti-racism begins with the original object of scorn, derision
and insult. In addition, just as the anti-slavery movement was not
confined to slaves or to Black people, so anti-racism was not confined
to the immediate objects of its attack. Du Bois once remarked that the
history of the United States in large part consisted of the position and
treatment of Black people and the response thereto; in similar vein one
may alfirm that racism and the struggle against it constitute a signifi-
cant component of and, in many ways, a basic axis around which
revolves much of the history of the United States. This is especially true
if one understands racism as organically tied to the socio-economic
base ol society and the struggle against it as constituting therefore a
lundamental aspect of the effort to transform — to revolutionize — that
society.

A history of anti-racism, in any complete sense, would reflect opposi-

HISTORY OF ANTI-RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES 133

, inn to racist attitudes and practices towards the Indian and the African
Ind the Afro-American. In addition, one has in the United States racist
EU expressed against-and these views combatted-Mexican and
Mexican-derived peoples, Puerto Rican people and more generally
, atin-American peoples; against Asian peoples, with some shades of
differences as applied to Filipino, Chinese and Japanese peoples, for
example; against Jewish people, especially after about .870 and par-
ticularly Jewish people from Eastern Europe; against Irish people, and
peoples from Eastern and Southern Europe, especially Italian and

S' Whiteall this would not be the entirety of U . S. history, of course, it
would make up a large part of it and it docs constitute a basic
component of that history— but it has not been written. This racism and
anti-racism have significantly affected all areas of U . S. history, foreign
and domestic, from religion to education, from war-making to treaty-
making, from the arts to politics, from trade union activity to women s
struggles, from medicine to anthropology to psychology, from taxation
policy to police practices, from jurisprudence to dramaturgy.

In this particular essay, 1 am suggesting the crucial significance of
studying the opposition to racism as this ideology has expressed itselt in
its major form in this country-namely against African and African-
derived peoples. And in the specific examples that will be cited, I shall in
this article limit myself to white men and women, knowing full well that
the struggle against racism has been a Black-white one and that in .
Black people have been the pioneers, the most acute and the most
persistent. Still, the facts being what they are, and racism being a
affliction of white people in the United States, especially consequentia
is the history of white opposition to racism. And the fact is that that

history is very rich. . . , w v

The periodization of this anti-racist history would be, 1 think as

follows: (I) the colonial era; (2) from the Revolutionary era to 1829 and
the publication of David Walker's remarkable Appeal to the Colored
Citizens of the World: (3) 1830 through the Civil War; (4) the Recon-
struction era; (5) from about 1890 and Populism to about 1910 and the
appearance of the NAACP; (6) from 1910 to the beginning of World
War 1 1, with the 1930s marking a transition period, into (7) the era sin
World War II, marked in particular with the decline ol colonialism and
of imperialism, the rise of national liberation movements and successes
and the spread of socialism into a world-wide system.

134

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

One must observe that racism constitutes an element of the m
general elitist philosophy which has dominated all class-divided sc^
cieties in history. One finds this in the views of the aristocracy and
nobility concerning the peasantry and so-called common people, in the
views of men toward women, in the views of dominant nationalities
towards those held in subjection— as English-Irish or German-Polish
etc.

Racism is a form of this class-derived elitism; it is an especially
vicious and pernicious form reflecting the fact that the exploitation and
oppression of its objects have been especially severe.

This pervasive elitism is reflected in the very language one uses. For
example, consider the dual meanings of poor — i.e., without money and
without merit; or of rich— i.e., with money and with merit. Or consider
such words as proper and then property and propriety and proprietor,
and so on. One would require, indeed, a volume to trace this ruling-
class impact upon language, past and present and its persistence and
weight given the facts that we live in a monopolistic and imperialist—
and racist — society.

In Shakespeare’s day wretch meant peasant; we know what it con-
notes today. And what it connotes today was really present in the word
centuries ago; that is, the peasant was a wretch because he was poor;
literally, in Calvinistic terms, damned.

If one reads the language with which, for instance, Luther excoriated
the rebellious peasants of his time and place and then reads the words of
the Richmond Enquirer denouncing the rebels who defied death with
Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831, or the words with which Ronald Reagan
denounced the insurrectionists of Watts in our own day, he will see that
not only the content is the same but even the very words are quite
identical.

Let the reader consider these examples: here is a French aristocrat’s
observations in 1689 (La Bruyere):

Throughout the countryside, one sees wild male and female animals.
Black, livid, and all burned by the sun, they are attached to the ground in
which they obstinately burrow and dig. They make a noise like speech.
When they rise to their feet they show a human face, and, sure enough, they
are men. At night, they withdraw into lairs where they live on black bread,
water and roots.

And, in Rome, about 195 B.C., Marcus Porcius Cato, tells us:

W oman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the

HISTORY of anti-racism in the united states

135

"ns and then expect her not to kick °daL| ^^mer-to calHhings by^he^
r>ht rein . . . Women want total frecdo ‘ complete equality with

0 "cc,heyhave

ilf^l'alitv. they will be your masters.

In an essay published ^^^"/pr^udk^began^n the United

extraordinary precision as the P 8 forgets the rice, sugar,

Tuy, with Whitney’-" ntha BiaSe! ha! by then produced

of the l!nited states’

lished in 1971, offers this | °P‘ inherently inferior for reasons of
‘“'Tates'^m tShxlte 17th and 18th century, a rationalized racst
Ideology did not develop unt.l the 19th century tication and

I These views are erroneou 1 th mh than in the

pervasiveness of racism was greatf. . lier period this ideology
seventeenth and eighteenth order and that

was part of the superstructure of simultaneously bulwarked

ssssssggssssas

century!” . _ , „ rnrist ideology could be express-

This weariness with the fight ag is[n had been published, for

ed by 1789, since arguments coun g Baxter in 1673, by

example, by Sir Thomas E £ "Xantown Protest of 1688,
Thomas Tryon in 1684, they are in Edmundson (1690), George
and in the published writings of eighteenth century,

Keith (1693) and Robert ® >,<, 0 ^beginning of the American

confining ourselves to the period T > anti-racist literature

Revolution, something appro published anti-
appeared. Their authors and relevamdates^o. wilUam

racist writings are: J°hn d (1729- published, anonymously, by

ss’s.ss s"- u’ oto-

136

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

published again anonymously, by Benjamin Franklin); John Wool™
(1747); Anthony Benezet (1762); James Otis (1764); Benjamin
(1773). ' ush

To give one a taste of the argumentation, here is Anthony Benezet
writing from significant personal experience, in 1762. He affirmed that
he had found “amongst the Negroes as great a variety of talents as
amongst a like number of whites; and I am bold to assert, that the
notion entertained by some, that the blacks are inferior in the capaci-
ties, is a vulgar prejudice, founded on pride and ignorance of their
lordly masters, who have kept the slaves at such a distance, as to be
unable to form a right judgment of them.”

Here in this literature of the pre-Revolutionary period one finds
every component of the racist argument systematically combatted. One
has, then, in this anti-racist argument the following: (1) a denial of
Biblical arguments— such as the so-called curse of Ham— and an
insistence upon the equalitarian essence of both Testaments; (2) a
denial of bestiality and an insistence upon the humanity of the African
and African-derived people and an affirmation that they had souls and
the further argument that, therefore, racism was blasphemous; (3)
insistence upon specific denials of details of the racist exposition— these
almost always coming from those white people with prolonged person-
al and significant experience and insisting that Black people had the
same feelings as other human beings, that they felt remorse, loved
children, loved each other, resented injury, rebelled, dreamed of a
better life, were able to learn— and the literature often adds — able to
learn as well as any other people; (4) an argument pointing to the fact
that Black people had among them outstanding individuals, even as
other people had and here would appear such names as Dr. James
Derham, The Rev. Lemuel Haynes, Benjamin Banneker, John Chavis,
Lunsford Lane, Phillis Wheatley, Tom Fuller, etc., depending upon the
period of publication; (5) in general, the literature took an environmen-
talist approach, insisting that where inadequacies appeared they could
be reasonably explained in terms of opportunities, conditions, tasks
and expectations before Black people.

As racism may be viewed as a form of elitism, so anti-racism was an
aspect of the struggle against elitism and in the eighteenth century this
meant that anti-racism was an aspect of the movement against feudal-
ism, absolute monarchy, and oppressive colonialism. It was, too, part
ofa mounting rational, scientificand anti-medieval thought-pattern. . . .

history OF ANTI-RACISM in the united states

137

Beyond argumentation and ch" '!so2

£sidc of the sla^eS“Ian^ s ^^^^ Robert Ogle. In .804

lhese were Jonathan Br ^ of Georgia because of his defense

oneJabezBrown Jr. was dr slavery. ,n ,g,2 a whlte

of Black people and h « araem Orleans for suspicion

teacher named Josep oo vt a ^ with Black peopie; and in 1816
of participating in anti-slav e y for t^e same “crime

George Boxley of Virginia was se ^ notescaped from priSon with the
and would have been execu h • ht of siaves to rebel, in

ald 0f his -n: Andrew Rhodes,

Charleston in 1822, were to ipneshias. In 1829 a white

William Allen, Jacob because he had been distributing

ber-i;Samphlet and a white seaman in South Carolina suffered the
same fate the same year for the same ne - that raised

In terms of conduct one h,f J^^'^eighteenth century; one
Benjamin Banneker in Mary ^a Black scholar, James Hugo

has the published work of the ‘‘“"‘^vi^i.ionetwenty-
Johnston, showing fora hrnite pe 1 jn5t their wives because

two suits for divorce brought by wh.te men agamsUheH

of the long-term and close relationship of Slaves executed

or the fact that m that state at tha im ■ recommended mercy in

on the charge of raping white wo , presented petitions nu-

twenty-seven cases because whue P"e Black menhad

merously signed affirming that the vvh.te

had voluntary relationships! and l that p ; , records in one

Mr. Johnston also revealed that the census ^ others-

county— where the census take living with white wives in

showed that nine of the free ac rds enumerating Black

,830. He showed also, of thera were then

children in Southampton Cou y ^ ^ added that Peter H.

| living with their white mot ter . colonial South Carolina in his

Wood has made similar findings^ ^ o{ virginia> in the town of

work. Black vmage blacksmith-a very important person

Staunton, in 1753, the vin -g a free Black man who had

indeed, in the eighteenth cen ) white wife Here, then, in Vir-
migrated from Lancaster, Pa., with a white wile, n

138

RACISM AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

ginia, in the middle of the eighteenth century, lived a Black man and hi$
white wife and he served that community as its most important artisan.

1 have confined myself to some notes for the pre-Revolutionary
period. One should at least observe that the Abolitionist movement of
the nineteenth century had three objectives, not one, and that these
were made explicit in the constitutions of the various anti-slavery
societies. Those objectives were: (1) the end of slavery; (2) the improve-
ment of the socio-economic conditions of the free Black population;
and (3) the elimination of racism and racist practices throughout the
United States.

That last objective is neglected in the literature; but it certainly was
not neglected by the Abolitionists. A part of the history of anti-racism
would be a history of the struggle against jim crow in the United States;
that too, has not yet been written.

Remembering the necessary limitations of a magazine article, 1 shall
close at this point. Perhaps enough has been stated to make the point
that anti-racism has existed in the United States, that it has had a
significant history and that the absence of a literature reflecting that
fact is a glaring omission in historiography and a costly lack in the
ongoing struggle to cleanse the United States’ social order of its single
most awful feature.

Published in The Black Scholar. VI, January; February 1975, pp. 16-22.

history and partisanship

Falsification in History

Education—- literally, the act ofleadingforwardo^ ^ propei and (0

alas, as an institution seexing

obscure rather than e . phiiosophy making up so-called

Books, teachers, admimstrat • . P" ^ c,ass_expioitative systems,

education have teneeted and to 1 ,he historic characteristics ,of

hence all have been basically e«_ coionial-educaUon and the

I class rule— propertied, male supremacy, w the ale,

control of education hitherto h , 8 ; of capitalism and its

propertied overlord. In eras characterist,cs have prevailed,

systematic usurpation of the g . civilizations, including African,

of false education. education systems-indeed, to any

Basic to education and 10 . ade up of the past, and the future is

society-is history. Thc,Prf “vi me r twined. Controlling the past is of

140

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

Historiography has reflected its function and it has bulwarked the
class creating it. It has therefore been elitist. . . .

Du Bois, in his preface to my Documentary History of the Negro
People in the United States, wrote: “We have the record of kings and
gentlemen ad nauseam and in stupid detail; but of the common run of
human beings, and particularly of the half or wholly submerged
working group, the world has saved all too little of authentic record and
tried to forget or ignore the little saved.”

“Who built the seven towers of Thebes?” Brecht asked. “The books,”
he replied, “are filled with names of kings.”

The history books have been written by the kings’ servants for their
edification, glorification and sanctification.

In an economy dominated by the bourgeoisie, its scribes dominate
the writing of the country’s history. The historians whose writings form
the core of this nation’s textbooks, whose opinions have been soaked up
day after day and decade after decade by every literate American, have
been from and for the bourgeoisie.

Of one of them— among Bryn Mawr’s most distinguished former
faculty — Woodrow Wilson, a recent biographer remarked: “He had
never known economic insecurity, or poverty, or dread of the future;
never had he any intimate contact with men of the working classes.”
Thus may they nearly all be characterized— the Adamses, (Henry,
Brooks and James Truslow), the Bancrofts, (George and Hubert), Beer,
Burgess, Channing, Dunning, Fiske, Hart, Mahan, Morison, McMas-
tcr, Beard, Oberholtzer, Osgood, Phillips, Rhodes, Schouler, etc.

As one of them, James Ford Rhodes, himself remarked, they con-
ceived of history-writing as an “aristocratic profession” or “the rich
man s pastime.” These individuals — whose fathers were well-to-do
congregational divines (George Bancroft), or secretaries to such as
Henry Clay (Fiske), or who were themselves, extremely wealthy men
(George L. Beer in tobacco, Rhodes in iron, Beard in dairy-farming), or
ghost writers for presidents (Bancroft for Andrew Johnson, McMaster
for McKinley), or intellectuals-in-residence at the White House (as
Schlesinger, Jr. for Kennedy and Eric Goldman for Lyndon Johnson),
or in-laws to president-makers (Mrs. Rhodes was Mark Hanna’s
daughter), or Rear-Admirals (Mahan and Morison), or editors of
frankly big-business organs (as Oberholtzer of the publication of the
Iron and Steel Manufacturers Association), or the scion of Confederate
Governors and Senators (as Phillips), or quasi-official scribes for

FALSIFICATION IN HISTORY

141

Rockefeller and Ford (as Kevins)— wrote and taught history in very
niuch the same way as bourgeois judges have traditionally interpreted
and administered the law, and for very much the same reasons, except
that the historians have been less amenable to mass pressure than have

been judges. .

Naturally such individuals had “a somewhat careful solicitude for the
preservation of wealth,” as a sympathetic commentator remarked of
Schouler; of course, in their books, the “wage earner and farmer rarely
appears,” as was said of McMaster. Certainly one like Fiske would
detest the Populists and Rhodes thought of workers as “always over-
bearing and lawless,” while to Oberholtzer, labor organizers were
veritable demons, guilty of “follies and excesses,” who turned “foreign
rabble” into “murderous mobs.” Clearly, such "wretches like the
Haymarket Martyrs — were destined for "their not unmerited end on
the scaffold.”

The works of all the “standard” historians exude ultra-nationalism,
an almost naive male supremacy, an assumed elitism and a white
chauvinism so vicious that they write of the Afro-American people on
the rare occasions they mention them— as another might write of more
or less offensive animals.

In this country said the steel baron, Andrew Carnegie, in 1899. We
accept and welcome, as conditions to which we must accommodate
ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of busi-
ness, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of
competition between these, as being not only benelicial, but essential
for the future of the race.”

As the new century dawned, in 1900 William Lawrence, Bishop of the
Episcopal Church in Massachusetts and a member of the Harvard
Corporation, insisted, “. . . it is only to the man of morality that wealth

comes. . . . Godliness is in league with riches Material prosperity is

helping to make the national character sweeter, more joyous, more
unselfish, more Christlike.”

Surely if there ever was a sweeter, more joyous, more unselfish and
more Christlike country than this one with its war in Southeast Asia, its
arms shipments to the monsters today ruling Greece, Brazil, Spain,
Portugal, Guatemala and Cambodia, with an Eastland as Chairman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Mitchell in charge of what is
hilariously called justice, with Agnew a heart-beat away from the White
House and with the beating heart in the presidency belonging to

142

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

Nixon— the world has not seen its like. There is a sweet, joyous
unselfish and Christlike quartet if one ever existed: Eastland-MitchelU
Agnew-Nixon! And that quartet finds professors to write their music,
from Henry Strangelove Kissinger to Daniel Benign-Neglect
Moynihan!

A nation whose most powerful statesmen are the likes of that quartet
will have a dominant morality that determines its First Families of
Virginia on the basis of the number of slaves their ancestors owned. A
human morality would glory not in slave-masters as ancestors, but
slaves.

In any humanistic ethic, how could there be a moment’s doubt as to
which is “inferior” and which is “superior?” If one understands the filth,
parasitism, deceit and exploitative essence of ruling classes hitherto, he
will, I think, know that it is not the masses, the workers, the pro-
ducers— the “wretched of the earth” — who are the so-called inferior.
They have been subordinate, but they have been the creators; they have
been, as the Bible says, “the salt of the earth.”

The dynamic history is humanity’s struggle to overcome oppression
and end exploitation; that is the meaning of the phrase in The Commu-
nist Manifesto, that “all history is the history of class struggle.”

It would be well to examine briefly at this point the problems of
historical objectivity so incessantly raised by historians. The question is
a twofold one. It involves in the first place the argument between those
who differ as to whether or not an historian can be free of assumptions,
prejudices, a certain set of beliefs largely guiding both his selection of
data and his use of them. It involves in the second place the more
profound question as to whether truth as such, good as such, exist or
not.

As to the first question, the argument against so-called impartiality
has been stated and restated innumerable times, and is overwhelming,
but the conclusion generally drawn therefrom — the impossibility of an
historical science — does not follow. Certainly, Harry Elmer Barnes is
correct when he declares “that no truly excellent piece of intellectual
work can be executed without real interest and firm convictions,” and
that “the notion that the human intellect can function in any vital form
in an emotionless and aimless void” is absurd.

Clearly, the challenge offered by men like Beard and Nevins to be
shown one “non-partisan” historical work, one work free of a subjective
quality, in the sense in which this term is used by them, has not been and

falsification in history

143

ouaranteesThe^pres^nce of personality, viewpoint, interpretation, selec-
tion—^ a word, hi7^rlvWt0r^_indeed, self-evident- -as men like
It is then, unquestionably the laUer, »any written

Turner and Beard have written, . author in his time and

history inevitably demonstrates the inseparability
cultural setting. * . h joes not refute the reality of the

of the past and the present, exclaimed, “O History, how

present. Carl Becker, anticip g ’ „ insjste(i that the

many truths have been committed « thy^ ^ ^ yision of the

past was a screen up • feit that when one showed the impos-

“"lone lifts himself above

unless one sees that though there a premised

may be truth, unless one Objectivity is indeed

upon man’s exploitation of man, lhistl^st0" but he cannot

insoluble and one can either ignore it or accept it,

“omerville has put this point extremely well:

The historical materialist believes e'xistina state of affairs to which

believes in absolute truth a^n objeem^ a fuUer and fuller ap-

our accumulating knowledge P somelhing for them to be relative to.

truth, one may add] is evidently not the same
thfng^ as a^eUef thal^our knowledge of it is absolute* correct.

, tUpcic of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-
This, too, is an essential thesis o knowledge as relative.

Criticism, this concept of truth as dynamic reality to which

KufiS s.r. r r ~ ~ - -

“sacs. - r

given epoch results m enhanci g P ^ thus in making possible the
enrich men^oT fife^for ^ ore^nd more people, resolves not only the

144

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

problem of what is good, it resolves the related one of what is true. Only
by this complete renunciation of the accepted values and premises of
the bourgeoisie may one resolve that class’s problem of an infinitely
regressive relativism, may one break the bonds of its subjectivity and
create, in this sense, an objective history.

Only by the fullest and most complete devotion to one’s nation may-
one achieve internationalism; only by the fullest and most complete
understanding of necessity does one arrive at freedom; and only by the
fullest and most complete identification with humanity may one
achieve objectivity. Here is the theoretical heart of the identity between
working-class partisanship and genuine scholarship.

Such a philosophy carries for its upholders the obligation indicated
in Allen Johnson’s remark that “the more daring and more promising
the hypothesis the greater the obligation to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth.” In our world the most daring and most
promising hypothesis is, I think, dialectical and historical materialism.

From those who use it, then, or attempt to use it, one must expect the
most rigid adherence to the canons of science, the most uncompromis-
ing and relentless search for data and their meanings. This is preemi-
nently a philosophy of life, and those who use it are affecting life. Thus
it was, as Engels wrote, that “Marx thought his best things were still not
good enough for the workers . . . regarded jt as a crime to offer the
workers anything less than the very best.”

The Marxist conception of history is, as Engels also declared, “above
all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of
Hegelians.” It is a powerful searchlight, so powerful that if improperly
handled it may blind rather than illuminate. And it must be used, it
must accompany the searcher, who, light in hand, diligently works at
unearthing truth.

In this connection one sees the great significance and challenge in the
history of the Afro-American people— of Du Bois’ crashing chapter,
The Propaganda of History',” which concludes his classical Black
Reconstruction. For these, being the most oppressed and the most
exploited, therefore have been the most lied about. This history must
not be diluted, or co-opted, in terms of mere “contributions,” or of a
me-too approach as part of a classless, non-dynamic and mythical
melting pot. Rather, it can only be comprehended as the inspiring
record of battle for self-hood or for freedom and as a fundamental
stimulant and part of all democratic, progressive and revolutionary

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PROFESSION

145

movements in overall United States history — and, for that matter,
world history.

Historically, education has sought stability; its function has been to
bulwark the status quo. Given the nature of the status quo and the
dynamic quality of life— and therefore of science— such education had
to be reactionary and basically irrational. Education must be as dynam-
ic as life if it is to serve life; this is at the root of the revolutionary’s
challenge to educational systems and at the heart of youth’s characteris-
tic discontent with such systems. The more informed is that discontent,
the better, but be assured that the existence of that discontent is healthy
and is among the most hopeful phenomena upon the contemporary

Ascending social classes are wedded to science. That the decadent
ones now grasp at every repudiation of reason and make of intellectual
despair a lucrative virtue is indicative of their impending doom. Do not
the scriptures tell us that the devil rages, “for he knoweth he hath but a
short time?”

This paper was delivered April 19, 1970, at a two-day conference on Black
Studies held in Bryn Mawr College, Pa. It was published in Political
Affairs, XEX, June 1970, pp. 53-59.

The American Historical Profession

On October 19 of this year, no less a newspaper than the Wall Street
Journal headlined a front-page story, “Radical H istorians Get Growing
Following.” It went on to report the existence of “an increasingly
influential group of leftist historians who are challenging traditional
notions about the nation’s past”; that “the leftwing historians are
gaining increasing acceptance, both within and without the profession

146

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

and that, furthermore, “radicals are also gaining influence in th
traditionally conservative American Historical Association, and the6
are becoming increasingly common on many campuses.”

Not unrelated to this development was the report by Robert Rein
hold, in the New York Times of July 3, 1971, that a Harris Poll among
high-school students found that they regarded history as the “most
irrelevant” of twenty-one school subjects, and that undergraduate
enrollment in history classes at such schools as Harvard, Yale, Stanford
and Amherst had dropped by as much as a third in recent years
William V. Shannon, on the other hand, thinks that the findings
reported by Mr. Reinhold reflect a nation in which “time vanquished,
we lie exhausted alongside our victim”; that “what we have slain is not
time but our sense of ourselves as humans. It is that meaninglessness,”
he concludes, “which pervades this age of instant gratification and
instant results and permanent dissatisfaction.” (New York Times Julv
8, 1971.) ’ y

Other views are possible. For example, it is not that “our sense of
ourselves as humans” has been slain but rather that those whose
humanity has long been denied are affirming it with renewed vigor and
power; that these have not found and never did find “gratification” and
results, either of the instant or of the long-maturing kind, and that
therefore their dissatisfaction has indeed been “permanent” and hence
most profound and bitter.

While Mr. Shannon— who is not a teacher— tends to put the blame
for the feeling that history as taught is “irrelevant” upon the students
who report that view, Professor David F. Kellums, in a recent book
asserts: “The history d ialogue in our classroom is devoid of relevance. It
has become a seemingly endless nightmare, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. ... An associate of mine in the Department of
History,” Mr. Kellum adds, “remarked that Clio was not only dying,

but that she was being done in systematically He also admitted that

he did not know how to revive Clio. ... My own feeling,” Mr. Kellums
decided, “is that Clio’s case is terminal”! Professor Martin Duberman
has also expressed a despairing view and has, in effect, denied history’s
relevance: ‘1 hough I have tried to make it otherwise,” he writes, “I have
found that a ‘life in history’ has given me very limited information or
perspective with which to better understand the central concerns of my
own life and my own time.” (Evergreen Review, April 1968.)

Perhaps we get closer to the heart of the problem when we observe

147

THE AMERICAN HISTORIC AL PROFESSION

.at Professors Landes and Tilly, in their work, History as Social
lienee (Prentice-Hall, New York, 1971, p. 6), prepared as part of the
jj,rvey of the behavioral and social sciences conducted lor the National
I Academy of Sciences and the Social Sciences Research Council, re-
nted “. . . it must be admitted that history has been misused as a stick
?0 beat reformers and to block change.” Recall, also, that the 1969
Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, having
the theme “The State of American History: A General Inquiry was
described in the journal of that organization in these words: The
appraisal of American history that emerged trom the meeting was
surprisingly coherent. Concentrating upon the quality of future schol-
arship, it accused the profession primarily of narrowness and
thoughtlessness.” (Journal of American History, December 1969,
LVL637; essay on the Meeting by Richard H. Wiebe.)

1 think Landes and Tilly are generally correct in their indictment of
the historical profession or establishment and the 1969 accusation is
fundamentally sound, but 1 do not think this is a “misuse of such
profession or establishment. I think, rather, that this is the normal and
expected functioning of such a profession within the context of i s

social order and its role therein. . tnt.

Back in 1885, the president of the U mversity of Michigan wrote to the

president of John Hopkins University.

In the Chair of History the work may lie and often does lie so close to
Fthics that 1 should not wish a pessimist or an agnostic or a man disposed to

obtrude criticism of Christian views of humanity or of Christianpnnupl^^
should not want a man who would not make his historical judgments and
interpretations from a Christian standpoint.-

Of course, there are varying Christian standpoints; Count Metter-
| nich and John Brown were both devout Christians but of the two, there
is 1 think, little doubt as to which Mr. Angell of Michigan or Mr.
Gilman of John Hopkins would have preferred for their History
I Chairs. 1 suggest, also, that the preference has not terminated with the

yeprofosor John Higham, in a book published last year by Indiana
University Press, reports that in the late 1940s and m the 1950s; Unlike
the progressive historian [meaning people like Parnngton and i Beard]
his successor did not feel much at odds with powerful institutions or
dominant social groups. He was not even half alienated. Carried along
in the general postwar reconciliation between America and its intellec-

148

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

tuals, and wanting to identify himself with a community, he us
read the national record for evidence of effective organization ana ^
unifying spirit.”3 a

What Mr. Higham calls “the general postwar reconciliation” wasth
era of the intense Cold War and of McCarthyism; the era of the banni/
of Arthur Miller and Robin Hood; the jailing of the Hollywood Ten-
the indicting and trying of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois; the execution of the
Rosenbergs; Virginia’s legal lynching of the Martinsville Seven; the
exiling of Paul Robeson; the boycotting of Pete Seeger; the blinding of
Henry Winston; the firing of thousands of teachers and professors and
the refusal to hire additional thousands on racial and political grounds;
the era when Louis M. Hacker discovered that the Robber Barons were
really Industrial Statesmen and when Professor Allan Nevins left
Columbia U niversity to w-ork for the Ford M otor Company. If, as Mr.
Higham entitles his book, this is Writing American History, no wonder
students find that subject the least relevant of all subjects to which they
are exposed!

I he most thoroughgoing, the deepest challenge to the prevailing
structure, practices and purposes of higher education that has ever
occurred in the history of the United States is now in process. It seeks to
alter basically that structure and those practices and purposes. The
structure hitherto, and now, has been and is oligarchic and racist; the
practices have been and are snobbish, conservative and racist; the
purposes have been and are to bulwark an imperialist and racist social
order.

Significant tensions always existed — with periods of more or less
intense manifestations thereof— because the universities and colleges
could not help reflecting to a degree the class and white supremacist
realities and the struggles against them. In addition, the tension sprang
specifically from the ostensible purpose of higher learning— i.e., to
further scholarship, to seek reality, to advance science. That purpose is,
at its heart, in conflict with the structure, purposes and therefore actual
practices of most institutions of higher learning in the U nited States for
most of their histories.

The tension is greatest now because imperialism is sicker than ever
and notably so in this country; because developments of a socialist and
anti-colonialist nature have challenged the ruling class in the United
States not only in political-military-diplomatic senses, but also ide-
ologically; because the numerical and qualitative character of the

149

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PROFESSION

L body (and faculty) have been
wed heights and necessarily carry g of higher education in

The present challenge tot e nmfire eohemeral than is the world-

t Junited States will pers.st; “ » “^^Ship of the means of
wide challenge to the sys em ^ ^ challenge. Most of the

production. On the contra y, ^ shown, j believe! comprehen-

thinkers seeking to respo t ^ adequate response. 1 select

sion of its character let alone alio of one of the eminent

for brief commentary one of t t P^ „Between the Spur and the

figures among such thinkers t p Boy(j,s address at the 1968

Bridle” and consisting of ProfessM^ Univerysily Presses (published
gathering of the Associate fl Q^arteriy Review).

in the Spring 1969 lss“ of ™ V ^ of^e distinguished series of

Professor Boyd is l^^' ? f{crson. His essay contains many of

volumes of the papers of Thomas JeUerso ^ much learningi wry
the virtues of the third presiden • | “ b latter, it is worth noting that

CmJSSSK" a— 1 law

statesman was still formidable. limitations of the third

I Alas, however, h.s essay contans many ^ forma,ist,c m

president, too; basically e l is , serious when manifested

its concept of democracy. These fadings w vitia,ing.

in the eighteenth century, t y social order and its present

Professor Boyd’s estimate of th . ^ affairs is positive; his

government and that govern . ^ higher education in the United

description of the present real 8 think, wrong and the

States is absolutely glowing. In both

challengers to such estimates are : rig • writes that “0ur self-

in a rather unfair passage, Profess corrupt and that the U mted
anointed messiahs” report our society t bccaPuse such findings are
States “as a nation [is] sick. f the senate Foreign Relations

Boyd.

150

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

The harshness of tone and the adhominem approach reflect perh
Mr. Boyd’s passionate disagreement with those who do not hold ^5?
him when he writes that “mistaken as many of the policies [of the U i!
resulting from our sense of world mission may have been,” “yet no gre
nation in history has exercised its might with comparable restraint and
generosity.” The inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of North
Korea, of Indochina, of Latin America surely would not agree— and
the consensus among U. S. college youth today also is otherwise. Many
among them see a policy which has been unrestrained and aggressive
and they think this policy does not stem from a sense of world mission
but rather from a hunger for world hegemony— a Pax Americana on
the part of the class dominating that nation. They detest the policy and
do not experience the hunger and certainly do not wish to satisfy it with
their own lives.

Mr. Boyd writes that among the community of intellectuals there
have developed qualities permitting “rational discussion” and he names
these qualities as “tolerance, generosity, moral courage, justice, decen-
cy, and respect for reason.” But the consensus, I think, among college
youth is that rational discussion has not characterized institutions of
higher learning in the United States and that the admirable qualities
listed by Mr. Boyd have not permeated its administrative and decision-
making and curriculum-making bodies. On the contrary, these have
been characterized by timidity, opportunism, arrogance, prejudice,
elitism and racism.

Mr. Boyd reports that “our universities and other institutions [have
been] designed to give reason a chance”; but these institutions of higher
learning have not been so designed. They have been exclusionary; they
have been bastions of the status quo; they have been permeated by ugly
class, religious and— above all— racial prejudice. And they have per-
mitted themselves to become servitors of the rich and bulwarks of the
military-industrial complex. They have trained policemen for fascistic
Greece and monarchial Iran and sadistic Saigon puppets; they have
masterminded counterrevolutionary strategies in Latin America and
the Mid-East; they have served as CIA conduits in Africa, Asia and
Eastern Europe; they have justified and rationalized and supported a
genocidal war in Indochina which has very nearly destroyed the soul of
this Republic.

Their Boards of Trustees are not — as Mr. Boyd chooses to describe
them— “the most innocent and least powerful of witches.” They are not

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PROFESSION

151

.. hes at all- would that they were merely conjured up figures of
witches at , fact-and excellent substantiating studies

irheShshed o" L-the Hearsts and Rockefellers and Du
ponts and Fords and Gianninis; and the present college generation
F" that (even if Mr. Boyd does not). Such people are far from
."nocent and far from powerless; they do not waste their time on boards
and they do hold in their hands the ultimate and the decisive policy-
“akln control over higher education in the United States.

Mr Boyd ascribes to the seventeenth-century concepts of Locke and

the eighteenth-century concept of Madison, * deter“" ° ^
bv “the will of the majority.” But everyone who was anyone in thos
centuries — reading Locke and Madison-knew that when they spoke

of majority they meant majority of those possessing property and th

the security of property was-as Locke quite explicitly sta ted-rte
purpose of government (and further they meant a majority not only o
those possefsing property but also of those who were male and whi eh
Much of the present student generation in the United States n .
discovered these secrets-even if the editor of Jefferson has no
Mr Boyd fears that the present protesters and dissenters have asthei
aim “destroying universities and defeating the purposes for which they
s and’ do not think these two purposes are synonymous The
purposes which most universities in the United States have furthered
most of the time have not been worthy purposes: they are purposes
which contradTct what should be the purposes of scholarship and of

education. Such centers should be radical, ■ they sho“ld^e
at the root of the sickness that does characterize U. S. society, iney
should be communities of real students and scholars-that is, men an
“devoted to making this land one ^. .^ee cf racsm f
novertv of indignity, of violence and war and to seeking how Dest to
appl^ail the finestChat humanity has hitherto created and how to

brkT comment. Oscar Handlin of Harvard delivered an address entitled

152

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

“History: A Discipline in Crisis?” before the December 1970 Meeti
the American Historical Association (published in The AmT^
Scholar, Summer 1971). Mr. Handlin states that for some tenTe^
prior to the delivery of that paper he had ceased attending the meeti ^
of the Association; having attended that of 1970, “partly ou^of
nostalgia and partly in response to an invitation suggesting the retro
spection appropriate to advancing age,” he has come to the conclusion
that he “need not soon return.”

The meetings of the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s were splendid, Mr
Handlin reports. They conveyed, he says, a sense of “the continuity and
integrity of the historical enterprise” and they represented a community
of dedicated scholars “inching the world toward truth.” Now, he sees
the historical profession afflicted with “decay from within”; one of its
central difficulties, he writes, is that historians “stagger beneath a
burden ... of making ourselves useful in the solution of society’s
everchanging problems.”

It is likely that Mr. Handlin and l are of the same or very nearly the
same age; he writes that the first AHA meeting he attended was that of
1936 and that happens to have been my first meeting too. Of course,
what one sees depends largely upon one’s angle of vision, and memories
are highly personal. Still, as an historian, Mr. Handlin might be
interested in another viewpoint and different memories.

The dominant historical profession of the 1930s through the 1950s —
as represented in the American Historical Association and what is now
called the Organization of American Historians — was a closed, intense-
ly conservative, lily-white, anti-Semitic bulwark and reflection of the
same kind of ruling class. When in the 1930s a handful of mavericks
called attention to the fact that only white people (and almost always
only white men) delivered papers or held offices or conducted key
journals or held professorships, we were treated as pariahs. At the most
recent meeting of the Organization of American Historians, held in
New Orleans, Professor Harrington— lately a president of the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin— mentioned in quite an off-handed way that thirty or
twenty years ago there was a general policy in the profession to bar Jews
from professorships and, in any case and in any position, to keep their
numbers down to a minimum. This was notorious at the time and
denounced— by a handful— at the time.

In the late 1930s when some daring soul who was a member of the
program committee of the AHA actually suggested that perhaps the

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PROFESSION

153

crhnlars Carter G. Woodson or Charles H. Wesley

ssss rsssssrs:

Historians and rar y y erful and ep0ch-making work. Black

ticipate m meetings, reviewed in the American

Reconstruction, has been reviewed there!

Historical Review — and to J Review was able to

“-“aSEbs--

When in the 1930s and ™e faculties, there was

people were fired lor never hired n vanous history ^ ^

„o, a whisper of ^protest the witchhunts of the McCarthy
Handlin so lovingly describes. . Historical Association

era again shamed this nation, all the Ame « ^ “ mmittee the names

did was to give that despica > e ®mag . . the Association deeply

of “radicals" and to affirm scholarship-

regretted their membershp. eiehtjes— was arrested and mugged

Dr. W. E. B. Du Bo-. Unregistered foreign

and fingerprinted and tr rrmmimitv of scholars said a

agent"!— neither Mr. Handlin nor h« ^ J the midst of the

mumbling word; they N they we„t on with their

- "■

American Scholar on a profession m ensis. a profession

Of course, times are chang^g L { crisis and the profession that
that is in crisis; it isa socia orde that ism crisis^^

hitherto served to bulwark tha or rgd at less than tw0 million

Now, the college population is them as was true before

with perhaps 40,000 Black stu g numbers well over seven

World War II; no, now the college population nu ^ much

million, with 500,000 Blacks^ WQnfen of WOrking-class origins

larger percentage of y°ung a That quantitative revolution

" and helps guaranlee lts
C°Today^t is not only damned Reds and militant Blacks and enraged

154

HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

women and radical professors (and Angela Davis combines all these
virtues) who are hounded and framed, but white Roman Catholic
priests and nuns and M.I.T. professors.

No area of intellectual pursuit is more sensitive than that of history;
lies about the past feed failures of the present and fuel disasters for the
future. Today many of the faculty members who are in their late
twenties and early thirties are the products of the post-McCarthy era;
they are part of the sit-in and Free Speech and teach-in and Little Rock
and Birmingham generation.

They loathed Batista and hailed Castro; they despised Eastland and
admired King; they were appalled by the Bay of Pigs and enthralled at
the remarkable heroism of the Vietnamese. They may not know what
dialectical materialism is; they remain deeply infected by remnants of
anti-communism; Scottsboro, Lidice, Stalingrad mean little or nothing
to them. But they know— in very large numbers, they know— as
between J. Edgar Hoover and Angela Y. Davis who is right and who is
wrong and they know which of the two in this society is the chief
policeman and which is “America’s Most Wanted Criminal.”

Many of these now are not only beginning to teach but also beginning
to publish; and these — who made heroes of Castro, of Du Bois, of Ho
and of Angela— ask not about labels but rather about deeds, about
whose side are you on and who are your enemies. They insist on making
themselves, to quote Mr. Handlin again, “useful in the solution of
society’s everchanging problems.” They have not lost the hope that
once moved Professor Duberman and they have not decided that this
aim is incompatible with scholarship. On the contrary, they have
decided, rightly, I think, that that is the meaning and purpose of
scholarship— that partisanship on the side of the oppressed and ex-
ploited is the way to overcome the apparent dilemma of objectivity.
That to the degree one identifies with the oppressed, to that degree he
has identified with the forces of justice, and that such identity is the wray
towards objectivity.

Hence, the most creative of these younger practitioners of history
have consciously rejected elitism and racism and are producing immen-
sely creative and stimulating works in areas ranging from the Revolu-
tionary period to re-examination of the Cold War era; from the nature
of the U. S. Constitution to the nature of the I.W.W.; from realities
concerning the KKK to fresh examination of class divisions and
extremes of wealth, and social mobility in the U nited States. And not all

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PROFESSION

155

the truly radical

broadest senseand nclude therein p there also are

Sptnas^l'asof that vast majority of mankind that has never lived in

e'lFrom^rreat responsibditiestnow^reat^oppo«unities^Faced^with^the

challenge of mastering the pas di lh present and thus

greater opportunity for service exists?

This paper wasdeii^^ bv 750 Sdans mcetingTt

Political Affairs, LI, January 1972, pp. 45-5 -

NOTES

1. founding the republic

The Revolutionary Character of the American Revolution
1 V 1 Lenin “Letter to American Workers,” Umn on the Untied States,*™

ieudal."

The Declaration of Independence ..... „ ,,,

I. Quoted by Joseph S Dorics ^ ol ^1 9#(Nc w’ Yo^ m2), p . 48 . This'was written in
slightly different translation, may be found in \ ol. 22 (N

5. “c

6. Quoted by J.H. Hazelton, The Declaration of independence. (New York. 1906), p.

234. ,

I VC. 1 (New York, ,952). p. 3S9.

Italics added. -?aq_170

12. Ralph B. *:">'• “ pp.

13. Letter dated October 28, 1785, in Smith. See on this,

14. Frederick Engels. Anti-Duhring (New York, 1939) p. 117.

158

NOTES

2. PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

The Labor Movement in the South During Slavery

1. See: H. Biel, “Class Conflicts in the South. 1850-1860,” in The' Communist (\v
York). February and March, 1939; R. W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle J!
Lows, ana { Baton Rouge, 1939); H, Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (N
York, 1943); and sources cited in those works.

2. K. Marx, Capital (International. 1947), 1, p. 287.

3. W. H. Russell. Pictures of Southern Life (New York. 1861), p. 87.

4. History of Wages in the U.S. from Colonial Times to 1928, Bulletin 604. Bureau of
Labor Statistics (Washington, 1934), p. 56.

5. Eighth Census of the United States (I860), Manufactures, p. 725.

6. George R. Taylor. The Transportation Revolution, 1 8 15 -1860 (New York. 1951). p.

7. Though very common, it is incorrect to treat these Southern cities as nothing more
than appendages of the plantation system, as does, for example, Louis M. Hacker in
The Triumph of American Capitalism (New York, 1949, p. 29 1 ).Thus. as an instance,
only two Southern cities— Savannah, Ga„ and Newport, Ky.— gave Breckinridge"
slavocracy’s presidential candidate, over half their vote in I860. See the essay by A*
Crenshaw in E. F. Goldman, cd.. Historiography and Urbanization (Baltimore
1941), pp. 44 66.

8 M /^hckcr’ American Negro Slave Revolts, and To Re Free (Sew York. 1948). pp.

9. R, B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York. 1946), pp.
167-88.

10. Several Southern states, due to such pressure, illegali/cd the use of slaves in specified
occupations, but the laws were never really enforced.

11. Morris, work cited, p. 185.

12. Works Progress Administration. South Carolina (New York, 1941). p. 74.

13. Vates Snowden, Notes on luibor Organization in South Carolina. 1742-1861 (Bul-
letin of the University of South Carolina, 1914), pp. 10-11; C«. G. Johnson, Ante-
Bellum North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1937) p. 174; E. A. Wyatt, “Rise of Industry in
Ante-Bellum Petersburg” in William and Mary College Quarterly, Jan., 1937, p. 20.

14. J. B. McMaster, A History of the People of the U.S. (New York, 1903), 111, p. 51 1;
Selig Perlman, A History of Trade Unionism in the U.S. (New York 1922) p 3

15. McMaster, work cited. 111, pp. 511-13; J. R. Commons, and others, eds.. A
Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), 111, pp.
245-50; W. P. A., Maryland (New York, 1940), p. 78; Perlman, work cited, p. 3.

16. Snowden, work cited, p. 15; W. P. A., South Carolina, p. 75; W. P. A., Louisiana
(New York, 1941), p. 74; Bernard Mayo, Henry Clay (Boston 1937), p. 216; A. R.
Pearce. “I he Rise and Decline of Labor in New Orleans." Master’s thesis, (Tulane,
1938).

17. 1 his Charleston paper was one of the earliest advocates of free, public education, “of
having all classes, whether rich or poor, educated in Republican national schools." Its
“greatest object," it told its worker-readers, was “to urge you to break down the

barrier which separates your children from those of lordly aristocrats ” See: /V. Y.

Workingmens Advocate. Jan. 30, 1830; F. T. Carlton. Economic Influences Upon
Educational Progress in the United States (Madison. 1908). p. 51; W. P. A.. South
Carolina, p. 75; J. R. Commons, and others. History of Labor in the U.S (New York
1926). 1, p. 286.

18. Snowden, work cited, p. 15; Commons, Documentary History, IV, pp. 269-71.

NOTES

159

1940) p 78; Commons. Documentary. VI, pp. 108-1 1 1, J. B. Ant ’ ;

Women in Trade Unions,” in Report of Conditions ofWc^n«a Child Wage

Earnersinthe L'.S. (Senate Document 645, 61 Cong., 2 sess.),pp- 38 - 9.^

R Nolen “The Labor Movement in St. Louis prior to the Civil _ar, in - '•

2 His^Ral Review ( ! 939). XXXIV. PP- 18-37; W.P.A., Missouri York, 1941).

2, (BaUimore). Junc 4.

23. W3S. Sandertm, The Om» National Project: A History of the Chesapeake & Ohio
| Cano/ (Baltimore, 1946), p. 116-22.

24 Morris, in Labor and Nation, IV, pp. 32-33.

by Bernard Mandolin The Negro History Bulletin, December, 19. . .

28 <ron Industry" in William & Mary College
8' Quarterly (1926). VI, pp. 295-99; K. Bruce, Virginia Iron Manufacture m the Slave

29 C \ ^elT/t Second Visiuodie United States (New York, I 849V II, P- >27;

, JC Sitterson in Sugar Country: the Cane Sugar Industry in the South. 1753-19A)

(University of Kentucky Press, 1953), p. 61. . . ~ .

30. Shugg. work cited, p. 114; Pearce, work cited; WP.A.. Louisiana, p. 74.

3 1 . Ibid.; also Commons, History of Labor, l,p.614.

32. Commons, History of Labor, 11, p. 29; Shugg, work cited, p. 116.

S' wKStw 19391.POT.A..

84 WP A Virginia (New York. 1940). p. 114; H. M. Doughty Early Labor
Organization in North Carolina, 1880-1900 " in South Atlantic Quarterly (July,
1935), XXXIV.p. 260. . .

f6 (Chapel m,

3, pp

38 F \ Wicck The American Miners Association (New ' °rk, . ) • P P . . _ .

'. « r. March 26. April 6. bV R. B Morns ,h . r

Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine (1948), XL1X, p. 195m, tayior,

40. History of the City of Memphis ^ ^

CaperS.Jr..r/,e*iOTW^

41. Daniel Bell iswrong-not unusual for him- when ne w rue

Marxism appeared only “in the large northern cities^ (D. Egbert and S. Persons,
eds Socialism and American Life, Princeton, 195^ ,

42. Quoted by W community- then the largest in the

160

NOTES

a newspaper in Philadelphia. In 1868. Negroes in Texas published a paper using
Douai’s Zeitung press. They sent him a copy of the first number "as a token of
gratitude of the colored race that they preserve the memory of his efforts for their
freedom.” (Morris Hillquit. History of socialism in the II. S., New York. 1903, p. I9j-
P. S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the V.S., New York. 1 947, p. 264/j.)

44. E. W. Dobert,"The Radicals,” in A. E. Zucker, ed., The Forty- Lighters (New York,
1950), p. 179.

45. Overdyke, work cited, pp. 17-18.

46. H. Montgomery, Cracker Parties ( Baton Rouge, 1950), p. 127.

47. C. Eaton, Freedom of Thought in the Old South (Durham, 1940), p. 228; Ovcrdyke.
work cited, p. 1 7; Zahler. work cited, pp. 102-04.

48. Zahler, work cited, pp. 1 73-75; Ovcrdyke, work cited, p. 153.

49. The program is published— as an exhibition of horrors— in the speech of an
American Party Congressman, \V. R. Smith o! Alabama, made in the House, Jan. 15.
1855, Congressional Globe. 33 Cong., 2 sess.. Appendix, p. 95.

50. H. Apthcker, The Negro in the Civil War (New York, 1938), pp. 4-8; p. 44; Biel, in
The Communist. Feb. and March, 1939, and sources therein cited: R. Shugg, work
cited; H . Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts. References to this thesis recur in
later writing. A recent example is Bernard Mandel, work cited.

51. Material quoted from Biel, work cited.

52. K. Marx in Die Presse (Vienna), November 7, 1861. in K. Marx and F. Engels, The
Civil War in the U.S. (New York, 1937), p. 79.

53. Ibid., p. 81.

54. For Southern white opposition to the Confederacy, see: A. B. Moore, Conscription
and Conflict in the Confederacy (New York, 1924); Ella Lonn. Desertion During the
Civil Bor (New York, 1928); G. L. Tatum. Disloyalty in the Confederacy ( Chapel
Hill, 1934); J. K. Bcttersworth. Confederate Mississippi (Baton Rouge, 1941); J. 17.
Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1941); B. 1. Wiley, The Plain
People of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1943); E. M. Coulter, The Confederate
States of America (Baton Rouge, 1950); T. C. Bryan, Confederate Georgia ( Athens,
Ga.. 1953).

55. Coulter, work cited, pp. 236-37.

56. F. E. Vandiver. Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ord-
nance (Austin. 1952), pp. 165-66.213-14.

57. R.C. Black HI. The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, 1952). p. 333.

58. Forexample, the Richmond Examiner, Jan. 30. 1864.

59. William R. Plum. The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the U.S. (Chicago.
1882), 11, pp. 116-19.

4. RACISM AND CI.ASS CONSCIOUSNESS

Class Conflicts in the South: 1850 - 1860

1. G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina (Chapel Hill. 1937), p. 478; J. Redpath.
The Roving Editor (New York, 1859), p. 127.

2. J. S. C. Abbott, South and North (New York. I860), p. 124.

3. F. L. Olmsted. A Journey in the Back Country (London, 1860), pp. 474-75.

4. The Liberator (Boston) January 10. 1851; H. Wright, The Natick Resolution
(Boston. 1859), passim.

5. Quoted in W. Chambers, American Slavery and C'o/otvr( London, 1857), pp. 154-55.

6. A. Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer (Toronto, 1893); J. Redpath, The Roving Editor: A.
Abeland F. Klingbcrg, A Sidelight on Anglo- American Relations! New' York, 1927),
p. 258.

NOTES

161

7. w. H.Siebert, The Utter, of

*• fS York, iWW- 122. 143: F.L. Olmsted. Back Comm,

»or,h CaroBaa^m-f. L. Olmsted. Journey ,o the

,0. Septembers.' ,856. Aug« 24. 1858; J. Stirling, Utter,

from Slave States! London, 1857). p.- . . o .o^g citing St. Louis

dericksburg Herald: *. Chambers. American Slavery, append!*, H. 1 rexler, Slaver,
in Missouri (Baltimore, 1914), p. 12.

& & IBM, April 19. 1856. February 7, 1857,

,4 h7cX“ TuSLs Concerning Skiver,, VoL 3, (Washington, 1932), p.

17 Tn w ~

■ (Cambridge. 1938). p. 482; F l Olmsted. VoL 2 ' P^4 5 6?58 w. H. Siebert.

18. W. Hesseltinc, A History of the South (New York, mot. p.

Underground Railroad, p. 44.

22. Thesourws used for this are the New P- '

23. Historical Commission. Raleigh.

24 Gacette. September 27, 1856; F. L. Olmsted. A Journey Through Terra,

‘ ' (New York. 1860). pp. 5034)4. Register;
*•

ssS=.*ss5Eis!;|-S«b«,w,,

28. Milledgcville Federal Union quoted in IJ. «>. l miups, nu

(Cleveland, 1909). p. 1 16. frmnd in tetter Books of the

29. Support for this and the following parag P> J 635,636, 639. 653. 654.

Governors of Norn h C an :>hi na (M \sf j- » agfrN ^ |3< 23. 24. 25. 26.

located in Raleigh: New Orleans 12 15. ix56; New York Weekly

1 856: Richmond Daily Dts pat ch, Dtcen 1 ' ' jf , fera!ur, December 1 2. 1956;

TnW December 13 20 1856? January 1857-1858. pp. 76-77;
Annual Report of the A,ner,ffar' ' 51 5991 294, 297-98. F. L. Olmsted. Back

pp- 43 44' An cscaped German

162

NOTES

revolutionist. Adolph Douai. published an Abolitionist paper in San Antonio.

T exas, from 1852 until 1855. when he was driven out. See M. Hillquist. History of
Socialism in the United States (Nev.- York. 1910), p. 171.

30. Copied by Richard H. Coleman in a letter, asking for arms, dated Carolina county.
December 25, 1856. to Governor Henry Wise, in Executive Papers, archives division.
State Library. Richmond. Other letters in this source show that the governor in
December 1856. received requests from and sent arms to fifteen counties.

3 ! Letter from Montgomery County. Tennessee, originally in The Sew York Times, in
The Liberator, December 19,1856; scealso Mew York Weekly Tribune, December 20.
27. 1856. quoting local papers, and Atlantic Monthly { 1858), 1L, pp. 732-33.

32. Principia, New York, December 17. 1859.

33 Letters quoted are to Governor Letcher from P. Williams, .January 5. 1860. andC C.

1 arue, Januarv 17, i860, in Executive Papers. State Library. Richmond.

34. Principia, New York. January 7, 1860, quoting Missouri Democrat. K.ar! Marx read
reports of this revolt. Sec his comment and Engels' reply in The Civil War in the
United States, (New York, 1937), p. 221.

35. Austin State Gazette. July 14. 28, August 4, 11. 18,25. I860; John Townsend. Vie
Doom of Slavery (Charleston, 1860). pp. 34-38.

36. Journal of Southern History, 1. p. 47.

37. Liberator. August 24, 1860

38. St Louis Evening News quoted in The Liberator, October 26, 1860.

39. Material on this is in the Executive Papers, November I860, Stale Library. Rich-

40. R. B. Flanders. Plantation Slavery in Georgia. (Chapel Hill, 1933). p. 275.

41. New York Daily Tribune, January 3. May 29, Augusl5, 1861.

42. Edmund Kirkc (J. R. Gilmore). Among the Pines (New York, 1862). pp. 20.

25.59.89.90 91,301. , ,

43. A. C. Cole. The Irrepressible Conflict (New York. 1934), p. 34: L.. C. Gray. History v.
Agriculture in the Southern United States, Vol. 2(Washington, 1933), P-656.

44. W. H csseltine, Journal of Negro History, 1 936. XX l, p. 1 4.

45. See two studies by J. Chandler, Representation in Virginia (Baltimore, 1896) pp.
63-69; History of Suffrage in Virginia (Baltimore, 1901), pp. 49-54; C. H. Ambler.
American Historical Review, 19 1 0. XV , pp. 169-lb.

46 H M Wagstaff, State Rights . . . in North Carolina (Baltimore. 1906), p. 1 1 1 .

47. Memoirs of W. W. Holden (Durham, 1911). p. 5; C. C. Norton. The Democratic
Party in Ante-Bellum North Carolina, (Chapel Hill. 1930). p. 173.

48. W. K. Bovd, Trinity College Historical Society Publications, Vol. 5 (New York.
1905), p. 31: H. M. Wagstaff, State Rights, p. 110; C. C. Norton, The DemocralK
Part v. pp. 199-204.

49. Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1910, p. 174.

50. In 1849 a white man was tried for incendiarism in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and
one of the pieces of evidence against him was a pamphlet by “Brutus" called An
Address to South Carolinians urging poor whites to demand more political power
Another pamphlet of similar purport is mentioned as being circulated in South
Carolina in 1843. Sec H. Henry, Police Control of Slaves in South Carolina (Vmon.
1914). p. 159; D. D. Wallace, History of South Carolina, Vol. 3. (New York, 1934). p-

51. Laura A. White in South Atlantic Quarterly. 1929, XXV1I1. PP- 370"8?;

White. Robert B. Rhett (New York, 1931), p. 123 and C hapter V III; D. D. Wallace.
South Carolina, Vol. 3. pp. 129-38. „ .

52. For accounts of similar contests elsewhere sec. T. Abcrnethy, From Frontier
Plantation in Tennessee (Chapel Hill, 1932). p.2!6;C. Ramsdell, Studies in Southei

NOTES

163

,, i R R mck Albert G. Brown (New York, 1937). p. 65.

s^«£Ssss?=saa«s--‘“”

„ sssssssss—

62. Mobile. Mercury, quoted in New York %^“^anUary8’ 1861 '

63 I S. Abbott, South and A'orr/? (New York, 1860).p. 150.

65 byVTowe, Star, Unmasked, (Roches-

p. 428; see D. Dumond. The Secession Movement (New York, 193 1 ). p.

67. H . M . Wagstaff, State Rights, p. 145. ,-n

m- fe iSS S«<e" p p 228-30. where .he votes in .he recess, on eonvenhohs are
analyzed.

70. C. C. Norton, work cited, p. 204.

71. L. A. White, Rhett. p. 202.

5. HISTORY AND PARTISANSHIP

The American Historical Profession

3. 5X S'".' Wkm American His, cry: Essays on Modern ScHoiarship. (Bloom-
ington, Indiana. 1970). p. 144.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COMMENT

The history of the Afro-American people runs as a central thread through The
history of the United States. Without detailed knowledge ol it, comprehension
of the history of the country as a whole is impossible. •

Herbert Apthekcr commenced his scholarly activities in the mid-nmcte
thirties. At that time the established view of the Afro-American people among
white academics mav be summarized by quoting trom W llham E. \\ ood < .

then best-selling biography. Meet General Grant (New York: H
1928- and reprinted in 1946). The Negro, Woodward explained, is lovable as a
good-natuired child, with a child's craving for affection, but his easy temper is
deceptive. It is merely the pliability of surrender, the purring of a wild creature
that has been caught and tamed.” Woodward continued: Negroes are the only
people in the history of the world, so far as l know, that ever became free
without anv effort of their own. ... It [the Civil War] was nQt their business^
They had not started the war nor ended it. They twanged banjos around 1 the
railroad stations, sang melodious spirituals and believed that some Yankee
would soon come along and give each of them forty acres of lane and la ^nile
Herbert Aptheker’s life work has been a refutation of those assertions. He
was virtually alone among white historians when he began. Original sources for
S research were largely unknown. And, aside from

such Black historians as Drs. Carter G. Woodson, Charles H. Wesley and
W. E. B. Du Bois, the secondary sources were racist, pro-slavery

Aptheker believed, as he wrote m the introduction to one of his earliest
books To Be Free (1948) that onlv “prolonged and rigorous research ...
thestill largely untapped source material" would provide for an “overall history
worthy” of the Afro-American people. “Nothing can replace this basic p
cedure in scientific investigation," he continued, “and it ls ^ y °n^e f’ .en8 f
of such digging and probing, such sifting and weighing, that the disc p I nc o
Negro hisum i c a 1 writing wilfbe lifted from the level of fantasy, wish-fulf.llment

,o detail. Starung in

seventeenth century archives in states along the Eastern seaboard, and the slave
states in particular, Aptheker combed through newspapers, journals, diaries,
mtlUary and naval records, police reports, court cases and congressional and

166

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COMMENT

state legislative records, and continued the painstaking reconstruction of Black
history begun by Du Bois, Woodson and Wesley. He began assembling and
publishing his findings in 1937. Between then and the end of the Second World
War, Aptheker completed his master’s thesis on Nat Turner, his doctoral
dissertation on slave revolts, and additional essays on slavery and the struggle
against it, as follows (in chronological order):

Nat Turner's Revolt: the environment, the event, the effects. Unpublished master's
thesis, Columbia University, 1937. Published. New York: Humanities Press, 1966;
Grove Press, 1968.

“American Negro Slave Revolts." Science & Society I (Summer. 1937):5 12-538; and
tl (Summer, l938):386-392.

“Class Conflicts in the South: 1850 1860.” The Communist XVlli (February &
March, 1939): 170-1B1; 274-279, Written under Aptheker’s pseudonymn, H. Biel.
Later published in Toward Negro Freedom, New York: New Century Publishers,
1956; and in the present volume.

A related work, though published later, is The Labor Movement in the South During
Slavery. New York: International Publishers, 1954. Also published in this volume.

“Maroons Within the Present Limits of the United States.” Journal of Negro History
XXIV (April. 1939): 167-184. In slightly revised form Aptheker published this under
the title, “Slave Guerilla Warfare” in his book. To Re Free. Studies in American
Negro History. New York: International Publishers, 1948.

“Negroes Who Served in Our First Navy.” Opportunity X V 111 (April, I940):l 17.
“The Quakers and Negro Slavery.” Journal of Negro History XXV (July.
1940 ): 33 1 —362. This essay, under the same title, appears in Aptheker’s Toward Negro
Freedom ( 1956).

“They Bought Their Way To Freedom.” Opportunity XVIII (June, 1940): 180-182.
Revised and lengthened this appears under the title “Buying Freedom” in To Be Tree
(1948).

“Negro History: A Cause for Optimism." Opportunity XIX (August, 1941):228-23l.
“Militant Abolitionism." Journal of Negro History. XXVI (October. 1941):438-484.
“Negroes in the Abolitionist Movement.” Science & Society V (Winter. 1941):2— 23.
This was also published as a pamphlet. The Negro in the Abolitionist Movement. New
York: International Publishers, 1940. And, it appears as one of the chapters in
Aptheker's Essays in the History of the American Negro. New York: International
Publishers, 1945; 1964.

Between 1938 and 1941 Aptheker produced four pamphlets: The Negro in the
Civil War; Negro Slave Revolts in the United States, 1526-1860; The Negro in
the American Revolution; and The Negro in the Abolitionist Movement. These
were combined into a book, Essays in the History of the American Negro (New
York: International Publishers, 1945).

In 1943 Aptheker’s dissertation, American Negro Slave Revolts, was pub-
lished by Columbia University Press. To fulfill requirements for the doctorate,
Columbia then required publication of the dissertation. In 1952 the copyright
was transferred to International Publishers which has since reissued the book
on four occasions (1963, 1969, 1974, 1978).

With characteristic acumen, Aptheker observed in his preface to the 1969
edition that: “Writing on slave unrest in the United States— and doing this in
1969 — one feels more like a news reporter than a historian. While recently the

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COMMENT

167

California statesman, Ronald Reagan, found the ghetto rebels of today ‘mad
dogs ’ a South Carolina statesman of 1823 found plantation rebels of his day o
be ‘monsters in human shape.’ Which humans are dogs and monsters depends, I
suggest, upon class and, often upon color and nationality, too.

Having tunneled so deeply into the archival sources Aptheker mined a
veritable mountain of priceless nuggets in the form of petitions appeals
pamphlets and letters attesting to the Black quest for freedom. Without benefit
of duplicating facilities as we know them today, , he copied the dMUjn^s he
found -totalling some two million words— by hand. And in 1951 Aptheker

published the first volume of A Documentary History of the Negro People in

the United States, From Colonial Times to the founding o/t/ie A/1-4CP m
1910. Volumes II and III were complete m 1973 and 1974 respectively \ olum
II covering the period between the founding of the N AACP and the New Deaf
and Volume 1 1 1 spanning the FDR years through the end of W orld _War I! (New
York- Citadel Press, 1951: Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1973 and 1974).

Also after the war, To Be Free, Studies in American Negro History, which
Aptheker marks as his favorite bock, was published (New York: International
Publishers, 1948). It included the previously mentioned essays on guerrilla
warfare buying freedom and abolitionism. Hitherto unpublished chapters on
aspects of the Civil War and Reconstruction completed the work.

Additional, more recent studies in Afro-American history by Herbert Ap-
theker, include (in chronological order):

Toward Negro Freedom. Historic Highlights in the Life and Struggles of the
American Negro People from Colonial Days to the Present. New York: New Century
Publishers 1956. Especially consequential here is the essay on America s Rac»s
Laws.” originally published under that title in Masses & Mainstream IV (July,

1951):40-56. ' „

Soul of the Republic. The Negro Today. New York: Marzani & M unsell 1964
Outstanding in this book is the tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois, written shortly after Yus
death. This volume also contains a useful analysis of the

Black people nationally and in the various states, as prepared by the U .S. government
in 1963.

And Why Not Every Man? Documentary Story of the Fight Against S[a^ery.m'f
CS Berlin- Seven Seas Publishers, 1961; and New York: International Publishers,
1970. Often mistaken for being a selection from Aptheker’s Documentary History of
the Negro People, this work is actually an entirely separate etiort.

4 fro- American History: The Modern Era. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1971
Focusing on the freedom struggle in the twentieth century, this wo A .contains several
significant essavs including: “Afro-American Superiority: A Neglected Theme in the
rfeSre.” odgiil pub&tad in Phylon XXXI (Winter 1970>;336-343; “Anrter-
ican Imperialism and White Chauvinism,” originally published in Jewish Life I
(July, 1950): 21-24; and “The Black College Student in the 1920 s- Years ol Prepara-
tion and Protest.”

Two other significant essays by Aptheker in Afro-American history should
be indicated: ‘‘The Negro Woman,” Masses & Mainstream II (February,
1949): 10-17; and a pamphlet, Negro History: Its Lessons for Our Time (.
York: New Century Publishers, 1956).

168

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COMMENT

At the height of the McCarthy era when many Communists and progressives
were jailed and persecuted, Apthcker commenced a series of articles in the
Daily Worker detailing the history of political prisoners in the United States.
Between June 8 and September 3, 1953, accounts of the trials of political
activists in the revolutionary era, during the anti-slavery crusade, in the
woman's suffrage movement, in Latin America and the Philippines in the early
part of the century as U.S. imperialism advanced its colonial empire, and in the
socialist and labor movements of the 1920s and 1930s appeared.

Implicit in all of Aptheker’s work, of course, is a polemic against predomi-
nant trends in the American historical profession. At times, Aptheker made the
argument explicit, and in this regard too, his work is consequential. A major
effort was his Laureates of Imperialism: Big Business Re- Writes American
History (New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1954). Useful also is Aptheker’s
critique of history writing on the American Revolution which introduces his
essay, “Was the American Revolution A Majority Movement?" Political
Affairs XXXV (July, 1956):1-10; and his “Black Studies and U.S. History,”
Political Affairs L (December, 1971):50-57, which is reprinted in his Afro-
American History: The Modern Era (1971) under the title “Black Studies:
Realities and Needs."

Attendant to the recent escalation of racist violence in the United States has
been the simultaneous intensification of racist ideology emanating from profes-
sional and literary circles. Aptheker’s critiques have been prompt and devastat-
ing. Some of the more important are listed below (in chronological order):

“Legacy of Slavery: Comments on Eugene D. Genovese.” Studies on the Dft VI
(November-Deccmber, 1966):27-34. This essay with some additions appeared under
the title: “Slavery, the Negro and Militancy,” Political Affairs XLVI (February.
1967):36— 43. At the Socialist Scholars Conference in New Y ork City in the Fall ol 1966
Eugene Genovese presented a paper entitled, “The Legacy of Slavery and the Roots ol
Black Nationalism." This paper together with comments by Apthcker and C. Vann
Woodward of Yale University’s History Department, appeared in the above cited
issue of Studies on the Uft. Genovese’s paper represented the main ideas in his book,
The Political Economy of Slavery; Studies in the Economy & Society of the Slave
South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.

“Styron-Turner and Nat Turner: Myth and Truth,” Political Affairs XLVI (October,
1967):40— 50. This was Aptheker’s criticism of Styron’s novel: The Confessions of Sat
Turner (New York: Random House, 1967). Subsequently, Aptheker published an
addendum to the first review, "Styron’s Nat Turner Again.” Political Affairs XLV11
(April, 1968):47— 50. Another of Apthcker's reviews appeared in The Sew Student
South V (May, 1968):3-7; and in The Nation CCVI (April 22, 1968):543 547. The
review/essay by Aptheker which appeared in Political Affairs, was subsequently
published in his Afro-American History: The Modern Era (1971).

“Racism & Historiography,” Political Affairs XL1V (May, 1970):54-57.
“Banfield: The Nixon Model Planner.” Political Affairs XL.1X (December,
I970):34 45. This is a review.1 essay of the book by Edward Banfield, The Unheavenlv
City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.
“Heavenly Days in Dixie: Or, theTime of their Lives.” Political Affairs L1I1 (June &
July, 1974):40-54; 44-57. This is a review/ essay of the book by Robert W. Fogcl and
Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro
Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL comment

169

“The Struggle Against Racismf: “jgj

' **-* Inequah,y

Public Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1975.

utilizing his basic focus on aKaSding hte research

point from which to view a'] commenced writing a twelve-

efforts, Aptheker, in the ™d;n™t.^dns,“ tes ’ al, to be published by lntcrna-
volume Marxist history of the United S , ared in 1959; and Volume
tional Publishers. V olume 1, The Colon J 1960, and Volume 111

\\,The American Revolution, 1763 V Revolution to the First

'■ ”

volume Collected Published Works oj » . L ^ New York. In con-

the Kraus-Thomson Orgamzation LmJ. & 600_page Annotated Bibliogra-
nection with this project Apthe P Bo/5 (1973). Aptheker is also the

phv of the Published Writings of W t. ■ a three-volume

- Volume 11, (1944-1963) in 197,

Bettina Aptheker, June 19/8.

NAME INDEX

Adams, Abigail, 25
Adams, Henry, 97
Adams, John, 12, 25
Adams, Samuel, 17
Alcott. Bronson, 77
Alcott, Louisa May, 77
Aldrich. A. P., 66, 90
Anderson, Elijah, 50

Bacon, Nathaniel, 16
Bannekcr, Benjamin, 136
Bao Dai. 14
Barnes, C. F., 46
Barnes, Harry Elmer, 142
Baxter, Richard, 135
Beard. Charles A., 140-43, 147
Becker, Carl, 143
Beer, G. L., 140
Benezet, Anthony, 136
Bcttersworth, J. K... 91
Boorstin, Daniel J., 5, 15, 18
Booth, John Wilkes, 79
Boxley, George, 137
Boyd, J. P., 149-51
Boyd, W. K„ 62
Bragg, Thomas, 54
Brecht. Bertolt, 140
Breckinridge, J. C., 84
Brown, John, 49. 57, 67-80

Brown, W. W., 104
Browne, Thomas, 135
Buchanan, James, 92
Burling. William, 135
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 6

Calhoun, John C., 71, 132
Carnegie, Andrew, 141
Channing, Edward, 67, 140
Chapman, Maria W., 123
Chavis, John, 136
Clarke, J. S., 46
Clarke, W. H., 46
Cole, A. C. 63, 68
Coleman, Elihu, 135
Commons, John R., 31
Corprew, David. 59
Corwin, Thomas, 100
Coulter. E. Merton, 31, 90

Davenport. F. G., 30
Davis, Angela, 154
Davis, Jefferson. 44, 69
DcBow, J.D.B., 64, 132
Delany, Martin, 70
Dew, Thomas, 132
Donald, David, 68
Douai, Adolph, 40-41
Douglas, Stephen, 84

172

NAME INDEX

Douglass, Frederick, 50, 70, 79, 98,
104, 123-24

Duberman, Martin, 146
Du Bois, W.E.B., 71, 74, 91, 93, 103,
130, 132, 140, 144, 148, 153
Dulles, John Foster, 21
Dumond, D. L., 130
Drake, T. E., 130

Easton. Hosea, 121
Edmundson, William, 135
Elliott, Bishop, 63
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 77
Engels, Frederick, 91, 144
Evans, J. J., 62

Fitzhugh, George. 71, 132
Foncr, P. S., 31
Ford. Henry, 141
Foster, William Z., 40, 117
Fox, Dixon R., 68
Fox, George, 9
Franklin, Benjamin, 14, 135
Franklin, John Hope, 130
Frederickson, George, 135
Fremont, John C., 57
Furnas, J. C., 69

Galbraith, J. K., 117

Garnet, H. H., 122-23

Garrison. W. L., 50

Gaston, Charles A., 46

Gayn. Mark, 14

Gilmore, J. R., 60

Gloucester, Dr. and Mrs. J. M., 70

Gorgas, Josiah, 46

Gossett, T. F„ 130

Grant, Ulysses S., 79

Greene, Nathanael, 9

Gregg, William, 39

Hamilton, Alexander, 12
Hancock. James, 55
Handlin. Oscar, 151-52
Hanna. Mark, 140
Harrington, Fred. 152
Haynes. Lemuel, 136
Heinzen, Karl, 41
Helper, Hinton R., 49, 64, 86
Henson, Josiah, 50
Hepburn, John, 135
Hesseltine, W. B.. 52
Higham. John, 147
Ho Chi Minh, 14
Holden, W. W., 66

Jay, John, 12

Jefferson, Thomas, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18,
20, 23. 24, 25, 26, 63, 151
Johnson, Allen, 144
Johnston. James Hugo, 137
Jordan. Winthrop, 130
Juarez, Benito, 92

Keith. George. 135
Keller, Allan, 67
Kellums, D. F., 146
Kirk. Russell, 15
Kissinger, Henry, 142
Kosciusko, T.. 23
Kraus, Michael, 68, 73

Lane. Lunsford, 136
Lawrence, William, 141
Lay, Benjamin, 135
Lazarus. Emma, 111
Lee, Robert E.. 13, 69-70, 72, 78
Lenin, V. L, 7, 12, 14, 15, 20, 143
Letcher, J. B., 61
Lewis, R. A.. 54

NAME INDEX

173

Lincoln. Abraham, 26, 84, 92-94,
96ff.

Locke, John, 7, 21. 76. 151
Logucn. J. M., 70
Lowell, J. R., 77
Lucas, Charles. 21
Luce, Henry, 14

Madison, James, 112
Marion. Francis. 9
Martineau. Harriet, 121
Marx, Karl. 14, 29,41.43,45,85-86
Mason, John, 50
Mayhew'. Jonathan. 22
McCormick, F., 58
McGill, Michael, 54
McMastcr. J. B., 140-41
McPherson, J. M., 130, 131
Mchrmann, William. 54
Meyer, Hermann, 40
Miller. Henry B., 35
Milton. John, 21
Moore, Albert, 91
Morris, Gouvcrneur, 17
Morris, Richard B., 36
Morrow, R. E., 131
Mott, Lucretia, 104
Moynihan, Daniel P., 142
Myers. Isaac, 125-26

Nevins, Allan, 68, 141, 148
Norton, C.E., 75

Obcrholt/er, E. P., 141
Olmsted, F. L., 49, 51
Orr. J. L., 62
Otis, James, 136

Packard, Vance, 118
Paine, Thomas, 111

Parrington, V. L., 147
Perlman, Selig, 31
Perry, B. F., 62
Peterson, Florence, 31
Phillips, Ulrich B., 30, 131, 140
Phillips, Wendell, 67. 75. 104
Phillips, William A., 72
Powderly, T. V., 128
Purvis, Robert. 124
Pyle. Robert, 135

Quarles, Benjamin, 130

Rapp, Wilhelm, 41
Raymond. Henry. 105
Rayner, Kenneth, 66
Reid, David S., 61
Reinhold, Robert, 146
Reston, James, 149
Rhodes, J. F.. 73, 140
Robeson, Paul. 148
Rockefeller. John D„ 141
Roosevelt. F. D., 119
Rose, Arnold M., 135
Ruchames, Louis. 68, 130
Ruffin, Edmund, 66, 79, 90
Ruffin, Thomas, 66
Rush, Benjamin, 136

St. Clair, Arthur, 22
Sandiford, Ralph, 135
Schlcsinger, A. M., 68
Schnauflcr, C. H.. 41
Schnauffer, Mrs. C. H., 41
Scott. Anne F.. 131
Sears, Edmond, 79
Shannon. W. V., 146
Shcrwin, Oscar, 67
Shugg. Roger. 43
Siebert. Wilbur. 52
Somerville, John, 143

174

Steffens, Lincoln, 116
Stevens, Thaddeus, 104
Still, William, 50, 70
Stith, Gerard, 38
Stone. Olive, 91
Strode, Hudson, 69
Sumner, Charles, 104
Sumner, W. G., 114
Sumter. Thomas, 9
Sylvis, William. 39, 125

Tatum, Georgia L., 91
Taylor, J. H.. 65
Tempcrlcy, Harold, 143
Ihoreau, Henry David. 77
Trevellick, Richard, 39
Tubman, Harriet, 50, 70, 104
Turner, F. J., 143
Turner. Nat. 134

Walker, David, 133

NAME JNDEX

Ware, Norman J., 31
Washington, George, 9, 15
Watson, Harry, 70
Wells. Ida B., 127
Welman, M. W., 69
Wesley, Charles H.. 91, 153
Wheatley. Phillis. 136
White, Laura. 91
Wiebe, R., 147
Wiley, Bell, 91
Wiley, Calvin, 65
Wilson, Woodrow, 140
Winston, Henry, 148
Wise, John. 22^ 135
W'ish. Harvey, 91
Wood, Peter, 137
Woodson, Carter G., 67, 153
Woodward. C. Vann, 68
Woolman. John, 136
Wright, George, 53
Wright, Henry C„ 50
Wright, Theodore S., 122

lew World Paperback

& Political Science

Herbert Aptheker

Among Other New World Paperbacks

AMERICAN TRADE UNIONISM by William 2. Foster
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF W.E.B. DUBOIS
THE UNSTABLE ECONOMY by Victor Perlo
TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD by John Reed
BRECHT AS THEY KNEW HIM Hubert Witt ed.

STRATEGY FOR A BLACK AGENDA by Henry Winston
CAPITAL Vol. 1 by Karl Marx

BEETHOVEN & THE AGE OF REVOLUTION by Frida Knight
LECTURES ON FASCISM by Palmiro Togliatti
REVOLUTIONARY PATH by Kwame Nkrumah
THE NEW BLACK POETRY Clarence Major ed
IMPERIALISM TODAY by Gus Hall
PRISON NOTEBOOKS by Antonio Gramsci
SELECTED WORKS by V. I, Lenin

AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVE REVOLTS by Herbert Aptheker
KING LEOPOLD’S SOLILOQUY by Mark Twain
READER IN MARXIST PHILOSOPHY Howard Selsam ed,
HISTORY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. by P.S.
NATIVE AMERICANS by William Meyer
POLITICAL ECONOMY: A Condensed Course by L Leontyev
DIALECTICS OF NATURE by Frederick Engels
PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND by A.L Morton

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From the works of Herbert Aptheker, distinguished Marxist
historian, the editor has selected a group of writings which
sharply illustrate how the contour of U.S. society has been
and is being shaped by the struggles of those who labor— by
the working class as a whole and by the embattled Black
people. Among the subjects highlighted are: the interrela-
tionship of racisrrf, anti-racism and class consciousness,
and, questions of partisanship and falsification in history.

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